The two most important events of the 18th century were the American and French Revolutions, and they could not have been more different.
In contemporary terms, they roughly define the two poles of American political ideologies. Conservatives are the heirs to the American Revolutionary tradition, while liberals and especially lefties are the intellectual heirs to the French Revolution.
Conservatives elevate freedom as the key value in a good society, with limits imposed on freedom mainly to maximize the total of liberty for everyone. We have laws and limits to ensure that one person’s liberty does not impose unnecessary limits on others, of course, but the goal is to inculcate in people a sense of responsibility to maintain society’s liberty as a whole. Conservatives do not try to change human nature, but instead try to channel our impulses into socially productive pursuits like creating economic prosperity. Moral education is the realm of religion–God, not the government, teaches us how to be good people.
People of the left elevate empathy and personal virtue–at least in words if not in deeds–and focus their efforts on creating better human beings and it is the role of government to educate people into being better human beings, up to and including forcing them to do “good” things even when they don’t want to. This is why conservatives tend to focus on fixing system failures when things go wrong, and lefties focus on rooting out bad people when they see injustice.
Donald Trump loves to try to bully Mexico. But President Claudia Sheinbaum is showing the world how to stand up to the MAGA administration without playing into its hands. https://t.co/nu9q8o12It
— Jacobin (@jacobin) July 3, 2025
Bad Orange Man, MAGA, racism, sexism, and “-phobias” are the real problems in the lefty world.
The term “left” in describing political ideology even comes from the French Revolution, with the Jacobins (the French radicals) sitting to the left side of the aisle in their version of the French governing parliament.
Gallup poll results that will surprise absolutely no one. While Republicans overwhelmingly are proud to be American, Democrats are not – and the number keeps falling. pic.twitter.com/5H9cvRVBKb
— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) June 30, 2025
This explains why current Democrats dislike America so much–a recent poll showed that Democrats, by overwhelming numbers, disdain America, while Republicans are proud of our country. Democrats see an America filled with selfish, bad people. They wave the flags of “oppressed” groups and burn the American flag.
Republicans wave the American flag and hang it in front of their houses–driving down the street, you can bet that a Republican occupies any house displaying the flag, and that Democrats will scowl when they see it.
Elie Mystal: “Our country is THE bad guy on the world stage. The world needs to stand against America. Sanction us.” pic.twitter.com/3OjPx52Ryn
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 2, 2025
The most well-known figure of the French Revolution is Maximilien Robespierre, the key architect of the Reign of Terror, in which the revolutionaries tried to rid France and eventually all of Europe of “bad” people. Robespierre was nicknamed “The Incorruptible,” and eventually he was arrested and executed by his fellow revolutionaries because they saw the guillotine in their own futures. Robespierre brooked no dissent, and the only way to stomp it out was to stomp out the dissenters, because freedom of thought and opinion were deadly to the success of the revolution.
5/ Remember Rick Wilson (Lincoln Project co-founder) on MSNBC? “They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.”
THIS IS WHO THEY ARE! pic.twitter.com/whCEvE9o38
— Rod D. Martin (@RodDMartin) May 20, 2025
In the Left’s world, everything must be controlled from above lest individual freedom undermine the “correct” outcomes. Dissent must be stomped out. That inevitably means increasing regulation, income redistribution, government control of the economy, censorship, and enforced compliance with the diktats of the most virtuous. Virtue signaling is the road to prestige, and with prestige comes power.
🚨TIM WALZ: We should “DEMONIZE” people like Elon Musk!
He calls Elon a “greedy bastard” who doesn’t pay taxes. pic.twitter.com/PNbzz5aDym
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 9, 2025
Ironically, this is why the Left tends to default to violence when disputes arise. Since your opponents don’t just disagree or have different values–they are evil for disagreeing–violence against them is both acceptable and necessary.
Lauren Young, a Democrat campaign strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, made a Facebook post suggesting that Iran target President Trump at his home in Mar-A-Lago.
The Democratic Party is the party of violence. pic.twitter.com/QHzYR2Qr3I
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 8, 2025
It is difficult to conceive of conservatives calling for foreigners to punish America, but perfectly normal to see lefties appeal to them to knock around the bad guys in America, as Mystal did.
Deranged leftist writes ‘Nazi Scum’ in chalk in front of a Trump-supporting neighbor’s home. pic.twitter.com/7wld0b6W5V
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) April 6, 2025
Even the call for a world government stems from this. Just as the French expanded their revolution to encompass Europe–most people don’t know that the Napoleonic wars originated from the French revolutionary dream of uniting the European continent in one great big “virtuous” society to eliminate the threat of bad people.
Protestors at an Indivisible Greater Grand Rapids event shout “WE KILL THEM” in response to a speaker asking what they should do.
They need to be arrested and charged. pic.twitter.com/sXC8WdzfcX
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 6, 2025
This is also why American lefties see themselves aligned more with transnational elites than their fellow Americans–they are fellow “good” people, while their fellow Americans are corrupt.
“No FEMA for you,” a Democrat laughs at potential red-state tornado victims.
These people are diabolical! pic.twitter.com/OA87jpjc7P
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) April 3, 2025
Of course, virtue is not a bad goal for individuals, but in the conservative world, it is a private affair between you and your God unless you are directly harming others. In the liberal world, your lack of what they consider virtue is a direct threat to all by its very nature.
In their own words… pic.twitter.com/WHHbZwW0o2
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) April 1, 2025
The American Revolution was the better one–the French are on their fifth republic, having gotten it wrong time and again. Top-down control of the economy and human beings doesn’t work. There will never be a “new man,” as the communists keep trying to create.
That’s why communism will always fail. You can’t force people to be what they are not.
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