3 Comments

1. The main reason the French and South American Revolutions didn’t succeed like America’s can be summed up in two words: George Washington.

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2. I heard the South American Revolutions never would have happened if Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hadn’t raised the level of Gringo hatred so much…

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3. I have to say (though I could be wrong) the article gives Rousseau pretty short shrift.

   From what I’ve read — which is not extensive — he deplores and abhors the existence of then-current despotisms (he died before the American Revolution succeeded or the French Revolution started), without praising or advocating the current state of unfairs.

   He was observing, not advocating.

   Quite the contrary: in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, he vigorously railed against the descent of freedom from man’s natural state to that in society.

   Rousseau was disgusted with what he found when he viewed the history of mankind,

   easily seduced men who also had too many disputes to settle among themselves to be able to get along without arbiters, and too much greed and ambition to be able to get along without masters for long. They all ran to chain themselves, in the belief that they secured their liberty, for although they had enough sense to realize the advantages of a political establishment, they did not have enough experience to foresee its dangers.

   He does not sound like a proto- or pro-communist to me.

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