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Blinken’s Foolish Bastille Day Tweet

Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2023
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by Daniel Berman
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AMAC Exclusive – By Daniel Berman

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Secretary of State Anthony Blinken commemorated France’s National Day this past weekend by tweeting that “The War of Independence and the French Revolution were fueled by the same aspirations for freedom, democracy, and human rights.”

While the tweet caused little controversy in France, it provoked a minor furor online in the United States. For many Americans, the statement seemed to equate America’s founding fathers with ruthless tyrants such as France’s Robespierre who oversaw the guillotine in the squares of Paris.

But Blinken’s real offense was his embrace of the modern left’s effort to reduce the American Revolution to “ideas.” With the 1619 Project charging that the men (and women) involved in our revolution, notably George Washington, were morally compromised by their era, Democrats like Blinken cannot invoke them.

Both the French and American revolutions had “ideas” like “freedom” and “democracy.” Some ideas were similar, some different, but ultimately the American Revolution succeeded and the French Revolution failed not because of ideas, but because of men.

So, Blinken is forced back on the “ideas” of the American Declaration of Independence and French Declaration of the Rights of Man, neither of which was a project of government. The result of this ahistorical worldview is that we cannot assess why one revolution succeeded or the other failed, nor can Blinken even hint that one did in his diplomatic note.

What the controversy over Blinken’s tweet reveals is the need for a history curriculum that focuses on the unique nature and success of America’s founding, rather than on modern grievance politics. Before the 1619 Project, there were generations of revisionist historians who sought to undermine the myth of America’s founding, to reduce the events to a product of great historical forces, and thus portray the founding fathers as mediocrities.

The 1619 Project stands on the shoulders of earlier historical curricula which stressed how George Washington was supposedly a dreadful general. The first problem, as will be discussed, is that this revisionism was wrong even before it merged with the grievance politics of Critical Race Theory.

Worse, however, it ignores that the field of history exists for a reason – not to settle moral scores with the dead, but to provide perspective to the living.

The American Revolution was in fact exceptional; a revolt establishing an independent republic that would last for at least two-hundred and fifty years without a coup and only one Civil War. This was something the French and Russians in 1791 and 1917 failed to manage for even a single year.

The problem with the French Revolution was not a lack of ideas, or a lack of idealism. The French revolutionaries were probably better read than their American contemporaries, and Duma politicians in Russia had little to do but engage in elaborate intellectual discourse about the sort of democratic utopia they would construct if they ever took power during the rule of the Romanovs. Sun-Yat Sen dreamed of a United States of China when he raised the flag of revolution against the Qing dynasty in 1911, and would have been horrified at the neo-imperial dystopia the Chinese Communist Party has built. They were all inspired by the American example because it succeeded.

Why then, did it succeed? The ideas were useful, but the Declaration of the Rights of Man echoes much of the Declaration of Independence, if not the more restrained and realistic tones of the Constitution.

The Declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia planter whose wealth allowed him to dabble in liberal intellectual politics, much like the scions of the high nobility who initially led the French and Russian Revolutions. (The first prime minister of “democratic Russia” in 1917 was a prince.)

Jefferson would initially embrace the French Revolution, even during the Reign of Terror, only turning against it with the rise of Napoleon.

Here, if the authors of the 1619 Project wished a serious discourse about the impact of slavery on the founders, they might find an analogy with the French and Russian examples. Forced labor, whether in the form of serfs, peasants, or slaves, freed wealthy members of the upper class from the need to work, and allowed them to approach society on a purely intellectual level.

The impact of slavery was not to make Jefferson more conservative, any more than serfdom made European nobles more conservative. Rather, it made the latter blind to exactly how unpopular the economic and social order was.

Unlike the Declaration, which Jefferson drafted, the U.S. Constitution was produced by a convention presided over by George Washington. Washington may have owned slaves, as the authors of the 1619 Project are always determined to remind us, but he was no gentleman farmer. He trained as a surveyor and sought a professional military career. Politics was real to him. He would become the rock on which America was built.

America did not lack for foolish demagogues such as Thomas Paine, nor naïve would-be technocrats such as Hamilton, who like the Abbe Sieyes in France, would have handed the country over to a Bonaparte if left to their own devices. Both groups were checked by Washington.

Washington did so through establishing something no democrat in France or Russia or China ever wielded: a monopoly on force. Washington held the personal loyalty of the entire Continental Army. What that meant was that no one could use force against him. Any official or politician or even general who tried to rally disaffected soldiers would find their men desert when faced with Washington. Washington generally did not need to use this power, because everyone knew he could.

Many say Washington could have made himself king. Perhaps, but he could not have founded a kingdom. He lacked any heirs of his own blood, and even had he wished Hamilton to succeed him, Washington was aware that Hamilton could only do so over the bodies of those who would try and stop him. A monarchy promised not peace and prosperity, but terror, purges, and civil war.

Once Washington rejected using force himself, he could concentrate on creating a system in which no one else could seize power.

It is easy to spot the moments when the American experience could have gone off the rails in the way revolutions abroad did. In 1782, Continental soldiers, furious with their lack of pay, mutinied and moved to march on Congress. Had Washington chosen to lead them, he could have become a dictator. Had Washington been unable to stop them, they would have established a precedent that whenever soldiers felt underappreciated or underpaid they could mutiny and march on Congress.

Politicians within Congress on the losing end of debates could also have stepped outside and tried to appeal to the troops like a Roman Senator plotting a coup. America would have dissolved into military anarchy on the model of newly independent Latin American and African Republics before it had even achieved independence from Britain.

Washington ended that mutiny by his own personal prestige. It did not matter if the soldiers had valid complaints. He could not allow that method of redress to be legitimized. The knowledge that Washington could call upon that loyalty likely helped ensure the Constitutional Convention went off without incident.

In other nations, summoning a Constituent Assembly is dangerous. Any body empowered to create a new government will question whether it can be bound by the laws or rules of the old. The French National Assembly, by declaring itself sovereign, declared itself all-powerful. Yet its successor, the Legislative Assembly, by virtue of election, did not feel itself bound by the Constitution of its predecessor.

The National Convention which followed in turn based its legitimacy on the people. The model around the world is for constitutional assemblies to try to assume power, and either be dispersed by force or use it. Washington, as chair of the Convention, made clear to everyone its work had his endorsement, while also ensuring it would not produce anything he did not approve of.

The constitutional powers of the branches of government could be left vague because everyone knew Washington, as president, would be in charge.

Washington’s retirement too is misunderstood. It was not that he retired after two terms, which was important. Rather, it was that he allowed a successor to be elected and to take office while he was still alive, watching over him. This meant a recourse to extra-legal means by anyone was unthinkable because at the end of the day the army might have been more inclined to obey Washington’s orders than the president’s.

No such figure existed in France or Russia. Lafayette aspired to such a role, but he could not even persuade his National Guardsmen to block a march by the wives of fishmongers on Versailles or to protect the king or National Assembly from them. He was eventually forced to cross Austrian lines, fleeing his own troops.

If there is any one thing that made the American Revolution work, it is George Washington. Efforts to diminish him are not just historically inaccurate, but also damaging to any society or leader who tries to use the American experience as an example. If no “Great Man” such as George Washington was responsible for the American Revolution succeeding in establishing a stable republic, then in turn, the absence of such a figure cannot explain why the Russian and French revolutions failed to do so.

The result, ironically, is the inverse of what most of those who promote revisionism wish. Rather than undermine views of national exceptionalism, a narrative which denies the key role played by the founding fathers, it suggests that it is the fault of the French and Russians themselves that they failed.

These conclusions then appear not just in current discourse about whether the French were somehow “unready” for democracy at the time of their revolution, but that the Russians are somehow genetically or culturally incapable of it. It is one step away from making excuses for the CCP’s oppressive rule in China, which can be written up as part of a long Chinese tradition.

Blinken’s tweet was foolish—but the greater sin is committed by the historical revisionists in his party.

Daniel Berman is a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He also writes as Daniel Roman.

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Ann S
Ann S
1 year ago

The dems hate America. They hate the constitution. They want to rewrite history and the best place to start is to make Washington and the rest of the founding fathers dictators.
Blinken is a weak puppet in this regime and that is why he came out with this narrative. For what they say is believed by their base and to manipulate opponents to come to their side.
They want to eliminate the constitution and write their own.
As Benjamin Franklin said, freedom is great only if you can keep it. And Blinken just undermined the constitution and our freedom. They whittle away at it till we live like the Chinese and the Russians before it.

William Hodge
William Hodge
1 year ago

Bless his heart. Being an Obiden appointment we can’t expect too much from him and the other lackeys that tote Obidens water.

Fred Noel
Fred Noel
1 year ago

If it’s coming from someone in Joey’s administration, somehow it will always be calling the other (conservatives and Republicans) side racist.
This joke of an administration is the worst one in my lifetime. I’m 75, so I lived through the Carter administration. Jimmy Carter was a good person just not the the right person to be President at that time period.

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
1 year ago

We fought to break away from England
France had to revolt inside country & Reign of Terror killed many
We had No Reign of terror in Our Rev

Candace Gonzalez
Candace Gonzalez
1 year ago

Blinken is an incompetent nob. No matter how hard he tries he will NEVER be more than a sill for the democrat party.

Michael Stertz
Michael Stertz
1 year ago

Excellent, important article.

History 101
History 101
1 year ago

Top notch piece of historical reflection here. Daniel Berman clearly knows and understands the nuances of American history. It is very unfortunate that virtually no effort is any longer being put into teaching these fundamental truths in public education. Of all the places we need to do some house cleaning and conduct a purge, it is there that it needs to start.

Craig Coon
Craig Coon
1 year ago

Very good article, but missing a key ingredient–God. There are an amazing number of times when God intervened to allow our nation to be established and become independent and great.
For example, the Mayflower was trying to get to Virginia area. But fierce winds blew them hundreds of miles north to Cape Cod where they would have succumbed to the fierce Patuxet tribe if they had not been decimated by a plague just prior to the Mayflower arriving.
Or How about when George Washington and his army were penned in in Brooklyn Heights with virtually no chance of escape. However, when they desperately tried to cross the East River, a thick fog suddenly covered the area. In the morning, the British troops discovered that Washington and his army had “disappeared”. Just a coincidence? Hardly.
The point is that Washington was a great man at the right time, and God has a plan for this nation.
The other point is that unlike America (starting with the Mayflower Compact) that was founded on God’s divine Providence, the French and Russian revolutions were based on humanist ideas and left God out of the picture. Hence, they both turned brutal, bloody, and failed.
As a nation, we have forgotten or abandoned the real history of our nation and its founding. Thus people like Blinken and the entire Biden administration are doing to this country. When we move back to God as a nation then He will restore America as He has promised.

anna hubert
anna hubert
1 year ago

God bless America Has anyone ever said I want to be in USSR or China? Not even our own little communists ever thought of moving to proletarian paradise

John Bass
John Bass
1 year ago

Another great article and history lesson.
Long live the Republic, and may God help the USA!

George Washington's Admirer
George Washington's Admirer
1 year ago

President George Washington’s Portrait Picture is on our living room wall. Large and small volumes of books about him line our shelves. They are being actually read. An 800 page book about President Washington was read a couple of months ago entitled: “George Washington’s Sacred Fire” by: Jerry Newcombe and Peter Lillback. President George Washington was preordained by Our Heavenly Father to lead this nation. It seems unfathomable that the current administration would strive to denigrate, defame, and belittle such a great man. This has only served to cause me to admire, seek out, and read about him all the more. This is the ONLY reason to be grateful regarding the current administration. They haven’t furthered their cause at all. We Admire President George Washington All The More! May God Protect Our History! May God Protect The Reputation Of Our Founding Fathers, & May God Protect These United States of America!

Nick
Nick
1 year ago

Blinken is as totally worthless as John Kerry. He got to be Secretary of State as a payback for generating the letter that was signed by 52 previous security people verifying that the hunter Biden laptop was nothing but Russian disinformation. He has no experience at anything except getting Biden elected. Just like the rest of Biden’s cabinet totally inept, inexperienced and worthless just like Biden

Philip Seth Hammersley
Philip Seth Hammersley
1 year ago

Why not a foolish statement from a FOOL? The American Revolution was based on Republicanism, not “democracy.” The Founders thought “democracy” to be mob rule (like in today’s urban areas!). Also, the French were anti-God; the patriots based the revolution on God-given rights!

matt
matt
1 year ago

He , like the rest of the biden gang, do not seem to know very much about our history or the truths behind the formation of our Republic. They are so dead set on turning the USA into a third rate marxist stronghold that they forgot the basics of how this country got to be the leader of the free world. It is a shame to have ignorant people running our government and destroying our heritage.

Morbious
Morbious
1 year ago

The French were heavily influenced by Rousseau who taught that humans were blank slates at birth. His influence continues to this day. Most of our founders believed in some version of original sin. Hence they devised a system of checks and balances designed to constrain the evil in every human heart. The french believed that once the aristocracy was gone an edenic state would arise wherein the natural wonderfullness of humanity would flourish. As we all know, once they killed the gentry they turned the guillotines on everyone else and rivers of blood flowed.

BillBoyBaggins
BillBoyBaggins
1 year ago

I was not aware of much that was said above. Thank you for the history lesson.

james carlyle
james carlyle
1 year ago

Blinken is an unfortunate individual who has been put into a position and situation that only bespeaks of his incompetence. He can take succor however in knowing he is in the company of his peers–all incompetant as well as unqualified.

Patrick S
Patrick S
1 year ago

Every time I see this man I sense that he should be in his Noddy Pyjamas, carrying his Teddy Bear!. He is weak and allowed every foreign leader to insult our magnificent country. Poor, poor representative for the USA.

Jeri
Jeri
1 year ago

Was someone somewhere expecting that Blinken has an education with any understanding of World History? A big southern “Bless your heart” if you believe him to understand which to open, frig or microwave to get some ice.

CJ Statler
CJ Statler
1 year ago

It is infuriating to think that tripe like 1619 is being taught in government schools. Will the children being taught these lies ever be shown the truth, warts and all, of how exceptional the United states really is?

History 101
History 101
1 year ago

Gin,
You’re absolutely right. I lived through the Carter administration’s disaster too. If you read the memoirs of any of the people in his administration, Jimmy Carter was clearly a vindictive, mean petty tyrant. The Windfall Profits tax was an economic disaster. His maltreatment of the military resulted in a complete series of embarrassments at the hands of the Iranians, including the siege and capture of our embassy and the taking of hostages, followed by a tragically botched rescue attempt. It really seems in post modern history, Democrats haven’t been able to field a candidate who’s not, at the least, an incompetent boob, and at worst a self-serving liar, traitor and thief.

Old Silk
Old Silk
1 year ago

And by the way, after the 2012 pinging that went on at the Georgia Election Board to unsuccessfully hack in by the DHS, as reported by then Secretary of State Brian Kemp, Raffensberger is now working closely with Blinken’s DHS on election security.

Dennis Math
Dennis Math
1 year ago

Just remember, this is the same creature that keeps lying to the American taxpaying public that the 140 BILLION plus we have funneled to Nazis in Ukraine is resulting in Russia losing the conflict there when the truth is that so many male Ukrainian soldiers have been lost that the future of whatever remains of that corrupt center of actualy Nazi ideology has serious problems of a demographic nature. Gonna be a lot of lonely women in Ukraine if any decide to leave their foreign welfare providing enclaves.
The Brandon Administration and its supporters are lying evil piece of cat excrement, never forget that.

Donald King
Donald King
1 year ago

Blinken is a crackpot – a dangerous crackpot to be sure. But just another crackpot that the current administration has put into a position of responsibility where he can do unlimited damage to our country..

gin
gin
1 year ago

This was a reply to Fred Noel, but since the replies are hidden, a lot of people won’t see them. “maybe you should research Carter’s presidency a bit.”

JML
JML
1 year ago

Another useless example of breathing space!

Richard
Richard
1 year ago

Another senseless and unwanted comments. Leave!!

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