An American Version of the French Revolution?

From The Hill:

Jean Paul Marat, one of the key leaders of the French Revolution, once mocked the notion that liberty could be established by his fellow revolutionaries since, “apart from a few tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web of farcical scenes.”

Welcome to the modern French Revolution. The tragic killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis resulted in an important focus on race relations and justice in this country. However, it is being lost to an emerging radicalism that challenges people to prove their faith by endorsing farce. Across the country, political leaders and commentators are outdoing each other to demonstrate fealty to this new order, attacking core institutions and values. A growing radical element is fighting to out-shout each other as leaders of a careening movement, with politicians joining calls to “defund the police” and commentators calling for censorship. Moderate voices seem to be fading with the escalating demands that leaders denounce the values that define them.

Take those calls to “defund the police.” Once the mantra of only the most extreme elements in society, it has been picked up by elected leaders. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has said that defunding all police should not “be brushed aside.” Brian Fallon, former public affairs director at the Justice Department and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign press secretary, has declared support for the movement. (Read more.)

 From Alan Dershowitz at Real Clear Politics:

Of course there’s a danger of going too far. There’s a danger removing Washington and Jefferson and other of our founding fathers who themselves owned slaves. Look, we have to use this as an educational moment. We have to take some of the statues that were put up more recently, for example, during the Civil Rights Movement and perhaps move them to museums where they can be used to teach young students about how statues are intended sometimes for bad purposes, to glorify negatives and to hold back positive developments.

But the idea of willy-nilly going through and doing what Stalin did: just erasing history and re-writing it to serve current purposes, does pose a danger, and it poses a danger of educational malpractice, of missing opportunities to educate people, and of going too far. (Read more.)

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