from David French at National Review, The Sins of the Elite Don’t Excuse the Sins of the People

Even worse, the American cultural elite served up a ruinous sexual revolution, complete with anti-religious hostility that spawned and perpetuated enormous human suffering as families fractured and the fatherless multiplied. It launched wars without fighting in them, sought to help the poor without knowing them, and prospered in part by stacking the deck through a faux “meritocracy” that put a premium on credentialing over knowledge.

In other words, if there was any version of the American establishment that richly deserved toppling, this was it.

But identifying the reason for a political revolution is only half the battle: The revolution itself has to offer something better than the status quo. Egyptian governor Hosni Mubarak was an oppressive autocrat, and his ouster during the Arab Spring fired imaginations around the globe — until it ushered the Muslim Brotherhood to power in his place. Western history is littered with examples of justified revolutions spawning even worse tyranny. Few people weep for Czarist Russia, but no moral human being believes that the genocidal Soviet Union was an improvement. France’s Ancien Régime was riddled with injustice, and the French Revolution initially inspired even some of our own Founding Fathers, yet the Reign of Terror was a nightmare. If one could sum up the distinction between the American and French revolutions in two words, it would be these: virtuous revolutionaries. Thank God we had Washington, rather than Robespierre.

print