Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Aux armes, citoyens!
Joyeux Quatorze Juillet aux nos amis francais!
To American readers, please join me in wishing the best to the second oldest formal Republic*. The video has both the French lyrics as well as an English translation, and is well worth listening to. The lyrics describe a time when the forces of Reaction - in the form of the armies of the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria - threatened the nascent French Revolution, which was trying to wrest political power from an overly comfortable and entrenched Political Class.
In this American election year, this is worth thinking on. Formez nos bataillons!
* Great Britain, of course, is an older representative government, but has an informal (unwritten) constitution.
To American readers, please join me in wishing the best to the second oldest formal Republic*.
ReplyDeleteUm ... did you mean second-oldest continuous formal Republic, or do you still consider France a Republic even though it had subsequent periods of rule by an Emperor and several Kings?
On parle francais?
ReplyDeleteI have an awful hard time supporting the French republic and the storming of the Bastille. While the American revolution was a triumph of the Lockean, bottom-up ideal...power to the individual, I find the French Revolution to have been in line with the continental top-down model and an overall pretty bad thing that didn't actually even turn into a semblance of power-to-the-actual-people until ... 1870.
On the other hand, your graciousness to all is probably better than my skepticism. Vive la republique.
Aretae, le problem est dans les Etats-Unis, personne parle le Francais. Donc, je l'apprehende, et je l'oublie.
ReplyDeleteApologies to visitors from La Belle France for my mangling of your language.
My point, though, was there's a lot that we can learn from the French Revolution. While the top-down Jacobin structure is clearly undesirable, the rallying against an entrenched parasite class is quite frankly an inspiration.
We could use a healthy dose of that here.
Yeh, except somehow we elected our entrenched parasite class. Apart from some Kennedys, nobody was born to it. :-)
ReplyDeleteA few boo boos in the translation of the lyrics, but a very informative clip. ( Note how Marseillaise is spelled) And people think OUR national anthem is warlike?
ReplyDelete