Dear Friends,
It seems to me that one way we can tell the direction a revolution will take is how the former elite are treated. It may seem like a foolish metric to use but if we examine history and the results of historic revolutions we can glean some insight into the potential outcomes of present revolutions. No matter how far away a revolution may appear every revolution has consequences for the state of Mankind.
The most classic revolution is, of course, the American revolution. The Founding Fathers reluctantly, and some not so reluctantly, went to war with mother Britain. Due to a great number of transgressions by the crown the people became incensed to revolt from Britain and establish a confederation of States. The revolution was hard fought and narrowly won. The victors, in this case the Founding Fathers, were magnanimous to the defeated. There were no trials of British officials and certainly no executions of the former elite.
The results of the American Revolution are manifest for everyone to see. A republic that protected(s) the liberties of it’s citizens. After casting about for a few years the Founders decided upon a Constitutional form of Federal/National government with separated powers ala, Montesquieu’s judicial branch severed from the executive. The improvement in the lot of Man that has sprung from this font has been munificent.
Another classic revolution was the French revolution. In France shortly after the American revolution there was a revolt against the King and queen. The aristocracy was seen by the people as indifferent to their plight and in fact the very reason for their plight. So the people rose up, backed by the military, and established a democracy. The guillotine was the instrument of the French Revolution. After the revolution the aristocracy were executed daily. So much so that it became spectacle.
The results of the French Revolution were a trans European war. Napoleon, who has been called the first of Nostradamus’s three antichrists, invaded Egypt, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Poland, Russia, and fought with Britain the whole time. The French war machine was almost unstoppable. All of European aristocracy trembled at the name Bonaparte. In the end France was bankrupted, war torn and reduced for a generation.
Another classic example is the Russian revolution of 1917. Vladimir Ulyunov cheated in an election to determine the majority party in the new government of Russia and got the name of his minority party changed to majority party. The new “majority Party” then became part of the new revolutionary government. But Vladimir didn’t play well with others and soon executed everyone he could get his hands on. Sometimes, to make a political point, his people would open a person’s stomach, pull out a bit of intestine, nail it to a tree and force the person to run around the tree, winding his or her intestine around the tree.
The results of the Russian revolution were, generations of famine, tens of thousands were sent to the Gulags, the death toll of WWII was magnified, purges, wars of aggression against Finland, Poland and every former Soviet Republic. Generations of people were forced to serve their masters and lived as slaves. All these things, are still within the scope of political action of anyone who still clings to Marxism, as a viable ideology. Regardless if they consciously know it. But with all the power of the KGB and the blood thirsty attitude of Stalin the undoing of Communism was the example of Capitalism in action.
With these historical examples in hand we can examine the new revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. They are still in their infancy but we can already see the direction of the Egyptian revolution. The country is controlled by a military junta that now has Hosni Mubarak on trail. He is on a stretcher in a cage at his trial. The penalty is… er, death. Members of his government await their trial.
This makes me worry about the direction the Egyptian revolution is taking. As we can see by history, if the victors are magnanimous, or at least not villains, the revolution has a better chance to turn out well for the people and the World. But as the new government turns increasingly violent and vengeful the outcome of the revolution becomes more cloudy. History doesn’t have any examples of a revolution that became violent after it was over that didn’t turn into a tyranny. The resulting wars, famines and pestilence should give pause to anyone who seeks to turn a revolution violent after it is over… Unless they want the outcome we have been discussing. But if that is the case… Should they be allowed to have any power at all?
