by Sandra Coleman
Prudence, a Cardinal virtue, means practical common sense, taking the time to think out what you are doing, and what is likely to come of it. Prudence refutes the notion that if you are good, it does not matter being a fool.
Today In America we have a cultural divide and an emerging movement known as the Resistance. So we remember the American Revolution and its consequences.
Some, mistakenly, compare the American Revolution to the French Revolution. A few differences. Although the American Revolution involved bloody British battles, (we also did tar and feather a few rascals), we did not systematically execute 50,000 of our own citizens as did the French from 1783 to 1794. In the first modern genocide, Robespierre began accusing, arresting and beheading first the royalty and the wealthy, then the farmers and businessmen.
The motivations of the two countries also varied a bit: Americans believed in the Western Protestant tradition, English Common law, sacred Scripture, and they fought for individual rights. The French. on the other hand, sought to de-Christianize French society, strip away individual rights, and establish a civic religion of state worship. Voltaire sought to destroy Christianity for a general diffusion of irreligion and atheism. Priests and ministers were executed on sight; it was the Enlightenment—the “Will of Man” supreme. All hail to the great Collective. No “Grace of God” delusion there. The French rights, unlike American rights endowed by the Creator, were at the mercy of the nation state.
What did the American Revolution bring us? The Articles of Confederation, the Bill of Rights, and traditional English common law rights, such as trial by jury.
Now, to return to the Resistance. Progressivism, at the heart of the Resistance, was an outgrowth of which revolution? You guessed it –The French.
Talleyrand, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, said, “We were given speech to hide our thoughts.” An American warning of that sentiment in “1984” by George Orwell, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectful.”
British statesman, Edmund Burke, approved the American Revolution, hated the French Revolution. He said, “Whatever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.”
