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{"id":19836,"date":"2017-10-27T17:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?p=19836"},"modified":"2017-10-24T00:21:19","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T18:21:19","slug":"left-and-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/10\/left-and-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Left and Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

If something happens, it must be possible. Just so: The French Revolution was \u201cthe hard fact that gave birth to the modern belief that secular revolution is historically possible\u201d (20-1). Christendom, it seemed, could<\/em> be overthrown. Christ\u2019s kingdom could be reversed.<\/p>\n

At first, the overthrow of Louis XVI led to chaos in Paris. Marquis de Lafayette arrived on a literal white horse to put things in order. Fresh from the American war, Lafayette attempted to put American ideals into practice: \u201cHe presented a key to the Bastille to Washington, used American rhetoric to help draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and lent dignity as head of the new national guard to the fateful march on Versailles on October 5\u201d (21).<\/p>\n

It was a short-lived settlement. Across the Channel, Burke denounced \u201cFayettism\u201d as one of a \u201crabble of systems.\u201d From the revolutionary side, Babeuf \u201cExcoriated Lafayette as a conceited and antidemocratic brake on the revolutionary process\u201d (21).<\/p>\n

When the king attempted to flee Paris in the summer of 1791, it was over: \u201cRevolutionary France formally proclaimed a republic in August 1792; massacred, 1,100 alleged domestic foes in Paris in September, and publicly guillotined King Louis XVI in January 1793\u201d (21-2).<\/p>\n

French politics polarized around the issue of violence. Those who wanted a moderate constitutional revolution were on the \u201cright\u201d of the National Assembly. Those who pressed to \u201cfinish the revolution\u201d were seated on the left.<\/p>\n

But the bare facts of the seating arrangement weren\u2019t the whole story. Billington writes, \u201cThe subsequence equation of the left with virtue dramatized revolutionary defiance of Christian tradition, which had always represented those on the right hand of God as saved and those on the left as damned\u201d (22).<\/p>\n

Political became polarized: Between those who wanted to defend some remnants of Christendom, and those who wanted to undermine and invert it. The revolutionaries self-consciously sought the triumph of the goats over the sheep.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"