Bastille Day

I find Bastille Day well worth marking. Together with the Fourth of July it is one of the great markers of the beginning of a more or less genuine republicanism within human affairs. Prior to this the idea was limited to very small states, I think immediately of Athens & such mercantile oligarchic experiments like Venice. And even the big one, Rome, was never anything more than an oligarchy where the people’s “vote” were by blocks and had little direct consequence, and even that very limited republicanism only briefly…) With the Fourth and with Bastille Day we celebrate the dignity of the human person and that wonderful hope for self-governance.

In some ways Bastille Day is the more poignant of the two holidays, as it led to a revolution that was clearly marked by horrific excesses the American revolution largely avoided. (The American sins tended to be more subtle, excepting of course that one glaring contradiction of slavery…)

And yet, with these two revolutions, something happened, a seed was planted, and eventually genuine republics grew, and have flourished.

Of course we’re still speaking experiment. While kings are nearly all gone, totalitarian governments continue to be a major option in human governance. And, yes, the experiment is still seriously flawed. The American experiment has always bent toward a republic of the important, its own form of oligarchic governance. And watching the new imperial presidency being pushed forward by our current president and his court, I mean the executive branch, I sometimes genuinely fear for the republic’s dream of human self-governance.

At the same time back there in the last third of the eighteenth century something wonderful birthed.

And today we can think about it. To that hope:

Liberte’, Egalite’, Fraternite’!

Vive la France!