A seismic political change is sweeping the world in the name of socialism, but in reality, it’s communism. These men hate human beings and Western Civilization, and they especially hate the Judeo-Christian culture, its economy, and its God. Except for newer technology, which gives even more power to madmen, the New Revolution differs not at all from the French Revolution. The leaders are grandiose, hateful, and violent men. Their stated goal, as always, is to “transform” society. Their strategy is to slaughter and enslave as many people as necessary or possible. Their justification is to create a utopian “just” society. It always starts that way and ends in catastrophic dictatorships and empires. It is evil incarnate.
Our goal in this essay is to establish these ageless parameters between good and evil. While the French Revolution is the epitome of men gone insanely wild, the American Revolution is its opposite, a conservative and not radical revolution, where the new government will protect the freedom of its citizens. We need a conservative revolution that rejects slaughtering and enslaving people!
Two Earth-shaking revolutions took place in America and then in Europe in the 1700s. In America, thirteen colonies of the British Empire had become accustomed to a relatively high degree of individual, religious, commercial, and political freedom with respect to the distant monarchy. They literally begged the King to allow them to continue to live in relative freedom, without new taxes and restrictions, while reassuring him about their desire to remain devoted to him and to the British Empire. However, the King and his parliament refused and continued to occupy Boston and insist on their expanded powers. Only then did the colonists, with utmost bravery, sign the Declaration of Independence, which, in effect, placed all their names on a British death warrant.
The U.S. Constitution officially began operations on March 4, 1789. On July 14, 1789, the Bastille was stormed in Paris, and the French Revolution began. It quickly deteriorated into one of the most wildly unpredictable and violently vengeful events in human history. It went the way of many so-called liberation revolutions in modern times, utterly collapsing the world around it and ending in a violent empire that was short-lived. My own comparison between these two revolutions was inspired by a witness of the times, Friedrich Gentz, who authored a little book, The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution.1
Comparing the American Revolution, or as it is more appropriately called, The War of Independence, to the French Revolution tells a great deal about our true origins and why we should proudly defend ourselves, our traditions, and especially our freedoms.
An Extraordinary Happening
The fact that the Founders risked their lives by signing the Declaration of Independence on July 4th is extraordinary enough, but even more remarkably, they had not even built an effective, winning army to resist the British and protect themselves. Washington had taken over the ragtag army almost exactly one year earlier, on July 3, 1775, but it would take until December 1776 for a ray of hope to emerge when Washington brought his army across the freezing Delaware River and struck a successful but relatively minor blow against the British at Trenton.
In October 1781, with “the help of Providence,” as Washington often emphasized, a more seasoned and dedicated military, aided by a French blockade of the British, defeated the Redcoats.
On March 9, 1789, the U.S. Constitution went into effect. Together with the Declaration of Independence, which historians see as the preamble to the Constitution, history had taken an enormous and unprecedented leap toward human progress. For the first time in human history, a nation was founded on principles of liberty, and a government was formed with the primary aim of defending the freedoms of its citizens. Most and perhaps all other large governments had been founded on the basis of submission to one or another tyrant, regardless of any dissent from the public, until he (or rarely she) was unseated by yet another tyrant.
The American War of Independence as a Genuinely Conservative Revolution
The American War of Independence was a conservative revolution, and compared to today’s hateful and violent wars, it was barely a revolution at all. Before it started, the colonists formally beseeched the King and parliament to return to normal relations. Even after the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, Congress waited for more than a year for the King to become willing to give the colonies the right to representation and to loosen the more recent taxes on them.
The War of Independence was not about destroying anything — except the recent increase of British control. It sought to re-establish the more cordial relationship with the parent British Empire. Their colonial demands were based on tradition and law. With the gross exception of the slaves, the colonists were living quite free, and only demanding that their freedoms not be further encroached upon by a distant empire.
The conservative American Revolution is almost the exact opposite of the extremely violent French Revolution, which sought to overturn the existing society, to create a new one out of the feverish minds of competing revolutionaries, and to kill as many people as needed or to satisfy their lust for blood.
In America, one of the most momentous confrontations threatening the new spirit of liberty took place after the final military victory while waiting for the signing of a treaty. Washington kept his army together because he did not trust the British to come to a genuine peace agreement in the absence of an American army to threaten them. During this time, George Washington’s officers, representing an army that feared it would never be paid what was promised, met together in a church to discuss making George Washington their king and then marching on the Continental Congress to demand their wages. It seemed like a sure thing: Washington’s army worshipped him, the people adored him and would not resist, and no one in history, backed by a victorious army, had ever turned down the opportunity to rule in favor of promoting a republic and individual freedom.
Washington stood before his men, who wanted to pronounce him King, and with tragedy in his voice and his demeanor, chided them for wanting to destroy the very thing they and he had fought so hard to attain — freedom and a republic without a dictator.
In the end, instead of becoming King George, Washington resigned from the army and returned to Mt. Vernon. According to some historians, “When told by the American artist Benjamin West that Washington was going to resign, King George III of England said, ‘If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.’”2
Later, Washington not only rejected being made king, but he also then rejected a third term in the office as President.
George Washington was probably the greatest man in the world. Heroically, he fought the war for seven long years in devotion to freedom and the new nation. To an astonishing degree, he tried to avoid any abuse of captured soldiers or against Americans who had sided with the British. Even during desperate times, he had done his best to avoid commandeering food or other goods from the people. During and after the war, he resisted retaliation against Americans who sided with the British,
The only major retaliation after the war that I am aware of was when he sent an army into the area in which I now live in Upstate New York. The army drove out and scorched the land of the native American tribe that not only sided with the British but had massacred many communities of colonists.
In his will, George Washington emphatically demanded that, after his wife’s death, his slaves should be given freedom without exception, and his wealth should first be used to support any children among them for their care and education. He also required his heirs to support any freed slaves who were unable to work, and all former slaves below the age of twenty-five while providing them necessary education.3
The French Revolution
The French Revolution claimed validity by comparing itself to America’s War of Independence, but it was nothing like it. America’s revolution was conservative, limited to gaining freedom from an empire. It aimed at preserving individual and political liberty, as well as self-government.
The French Revolution — with the fraudulent motto of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity” — quickly became a series of violent dictatorships determined to destroy all existing personal freedom, as well as all existing religious, commercial, and property rights. It aimed at rejecting religion and God, to replace universal laws with individual whims, and had unlimited visions including to rule the world. It ended in Napoleon’s failed attempt to rule over all of Europe and his defeat at Waterloo.
The French Revolution, with its global aspirations, was the forerunner of the horrors perpetrated by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and the horrors continuing to be perpetrated by Communists in places like China, North Korea, and off the American shores in Cuba. It is the forerunner of Communist revolutions in its envious and hateful intent, its substitution of slogans for any rational programs, its utter failure to treasure human life and individual freedom, its determination to destroy Christianity, and its horrendous violence toward its own people.
America’s conduct of the War of Independence and its founding documents are an incredible turning point in history. A new nation is formed to preserve the liberty of its individual citizens and their prosperity through “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
For the sake of God, our country, ourselves, and the people of the world, let us not forget why and how we got here as the first nation ever formed on the rule of law and protection of the rights of the people. And instead of forgetting, let us renew our rights and stand up for freedom.
Primary author: Peter R. Breggin, MD
End Notes
2 https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdstatehouse/html/gwresignation.html
3 George Washington’s Last Will and Testament, 9 July 1799 (archives.gov)
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