Today is Bastille Day, marking the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. There were some major differences between that and the American Revolution, but there were some major similarities too. What can we learn from them both? We celebrated our country on July 4, but maybe this could be a time for some healthy self-criticism.
From Happy Bastille Day: Why the U.S. should care about the French holiday:
July 14th is often thought of as France’s Independence Day.
More accurately, it’s the French National Day — called La Fête Nationale in French — commemorating the day in 1789 when crowds stormed the Bastille, a fortress used as a prison in Paris. The event marks the beginning of the French Revolution.
So what does it have to do with the USA? A lot, actually. . . .
The military significance of the storming of the Bastille was small. There were only a handful of prisoners in the fortress at that time.But the day remains a symbol of people overcoming “monarchical despotism, censorship, oppression of people who spoke up. Its fall carried enormous symbolic power,” Paul Hanson, a professor of history at Butler University, told USA TODAY Network.
Americans will also see parallels between their own revolution and that of France’s.
“Our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Right of Man and of the Citizen grew out of the same Enlightenment philosophical culture,” Hanson said. “We share a lot of the same ideals and assertions of human rights.”
But is there also a common contempt of even legitimate authority? A common eagerness to throw out the past and impose untried social experiments? A bipolar lurching back and forth from anarchy to all-powerful government?
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