Then Comes Thermidor
When the morality of nations becomes too inverted, they collapse and reassemble under tyranny. The historical record is clear.
In 1789, the French Revolution began. On paper it looked good — the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was heavily influenced by the American Declaration of Independence. Yet, our Revolution went from success to success while the French Revolution destroyed itself. As the saying goes, ‘The Revolution eats its own.’
Some say the French Revolution went awry because their founding document grounded human rights in the state rather than God, as the American Declaration did.
But, actually, the French Declaration did recognize natural rights as imprescriptible. They were inherent, not inventions of the state, and it proclaimed those rights as coming from the Supreme Being:
Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen.
And, the French Revolution accomplished positive changes as far as religious freedoms, liberating both Protestants and Jews.
So what went wrong?
Well, to put it bluntly, the lunatics usurped noble efforts. There was no internal brake on the French revolutionary government. Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just went insane.
All of France’s Christian history was tossed to the wind. The Revolutionaries tried to stamp out the faith, started the Deistic Cult of Reason, plundered Notre-Dame, and held a festival with idolatrous worship of the Goddess of Liberty:
In Paris in the Cathedral of Notre Dame the altar was replaced with an altar to Liberty. There were parades of girls dressed in white and the Goddess of Liberty was portrayed by Sophie Momoro wife of the organiser [sic]. Since the Festival some more interesting accounts of the event were told including tales of prostitutes dressed as Goddesses scantily clad and singing lewd songs. These are mostly likely exaggerations and pure inventions.
All the while, the Revolutionary government was killing anyone even suspected of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Those who were not radical enough were guillotined.
Insanity was the order of the day. Finally, Robespierre went one step too far, calling for more executions, the parliament revolted, and then came the Thermidorian Reaction, which ultimately led to the dictatorship of Napoleon — who oddly was still more progressive than most of Europe’s monarchs, but far from what the French Revolution had promised.
The revolution led to a dictator.
A century and a half later, the people of Weimar Germany believed their young republic was hopeless. Society had become anarchistic and degenerate. Berlin was the world center of sexual deviancy, as immortalized by playwright Christopher Isherwood, and later the movie Cabaret. The German people were fed up. So they voted in an authoritarian coalition, led by Hitler. But there was a competing power bloc in the Nazi party under Ernst Rohm, a homosexual pedophile, a radical anti-capitalist socialist, and leader of the Brownshirts.
Frankly, Rohm was unstable, just like Robespierre. His antics would’ve sunk the Nazi party, so the German Army told Hitler to get rid of Rohm, or they would get rid of Hitler.
Then came the infamous “Night of the Long Knives” where Nazi hierarchy killed the leaders of the Brownshirts. After that, Hitler consolidated the Nazi party, and in came real totalitarianism.
We see a pattern, when revolutionaries — the Nazis thought of themselves as revolutionaries — go too far, there is a swift, murderous, brutal, counter-reaction. The lunatic fringe goes first.
In France, the revolutionary Directory executed Robespierre and the more extreme elements. They had to, in order to preserve what was left of the French Revolution. Even then, the revolution failed and Napoleon eventually took over.
In Germany, Hitler had to get rid of the radical brownshirts. Officially, 85 leaders were killed. Estimates run much higher.
After the Soviets seized power in Russia, every leftist lunatic on the planet floated in, throwing Russia into a social maelstrom. The Bolshevik Revolution was on the verge of collapse, and then the Kronstadt sailors rose up in protest for more democracy. Finally, the Reds went full totalitarian, destroyed the rebellion, and set up the dictatorship. Lenin died, and Trotsky wanted a perpetual revolution which would have destabilized Russia further, so Stalin took over.
The pattern is clear. When lunatics take over a government, a strongman emerges, and sets up a dictatorship.
In the French revolution, it was ultimately Napoleon. In Germany, it was Hitler. In Russia, it was Stalin. In all cases, the final dictator undid the gains of the revolution, often being worse than the predecessor. They had to, or the society would have collapsed.
Even Napoleon. He may not have been a totalitarian, but his vainglorious wars of empire took more lives than the Bourbon monarchy ever did. Napoleon’s actions led to the death of millions of people.
The Stormtrooper homosexuals, who helped set up the Nazi government, wound end up dead or in prison. Stalin executed the old revolutionaries after show trials and kangaroo courts. Trotsky recognized the pattern and referred to Stalin as the Thermidorian Reaction.
If the LGBTQ and transexual extremists think that they are on the verge of victory, so did Robespierre, Ernst Rohm, and Leon Trotsky.
And the list is endless. Cromwell, who was an extremist, left a country so unstable that soon after his death, the English invited back the very monarchy of which Cromwell had dethroned.
Trump was not a Thermidorian reaction, but rather the last hope of decent government before a Thermidor becomes inevitable. The attack on Mar-a-Lago may be the last straw.
If the squad, the LGBTQ radicals, and the BLM activists do not back off, the result will be no better. They may think they can rewrite history and human nature, but they cannot. They may be working to pursue their goals to victory or the collapse of the USA.
If things get that bad — and I hope they do not — I sincerely hope this is all resolved constitutionally and peaceably — but if they do not back off, and if history is any clue, they will be the first ones to suffer. The clock will be rolled back, far back. They won’t know what hit them.
You can only push people so far and then comes Thermidor.
Image: Unidentified painter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons