Title : A terrible NYT headline, "Robespierre’s America/We need to reclaim the spirit of 1776, not the certitudes of 1789"...
link : A terrible NYT headline, "Robespierre’s America/We need to reclaim the spirit of 1776, not the certitudes of 1789"...
A terrible NYT headline, "Robespierre’s America/We need to reclaim the spirit of 1776, not the certitudes of 1789"...
... for a column by Bret Stephens.If we are reclaiming something, then we are taking back what we once had. What was it we had in 1789? It was the United States Constitution! The first Congress met and declared it in effect. The Bill of Rights was proposed and sent out for ratification. The first President was chosen and inaugurated, and the Departments of State, War, and the Treasury were established. Why shouldn't we "reclaim" that "certitude"?
Oh... I see... "Robespierre's America." The "certitude of 1789" is what happened in France. How would we reclaim that? We never had it.
I know there's a column here likening the present-day times to the French Revolution, but I'm annoyed... and not just by the inaccuracy of "reclaim." I'm annoyed that the New York Times thinks 1789 is obviously a reference to French history — as if 1789 were not a phenomenally important year in American history.
With such rockets-red glaring ignorance at the top, the rest of the column feels worthless.
I skim enough to see that the ignorance that bugs me doesn't come only from the headline writer. Stephens himself says:
I’m writing this column on the eve of July 4. But the country I’m describing each year seems to feel the spirit of 1776 less and the spirit of 1789 more. “Armed with the ‘truth,’ Jacobins could brand any individuals who dared to disagree with them traitors or fanatics,” historian Susan Dunn wrote of the French Revolution. “Any distinction between their own political adversaries and the people’s ‘enemies’ was obliterated.”
The Fourth of July is a date traditionally associated with the name of Thomas Jefferson. Nobody today denies his hypocrisies, flaws, bigotries and misjudgments. I’m still glad I live in the country he helped make, not the America that our latter-day Robespierres would design.1789 isn't even a good way to refer to Robespierre!
As one of the leading members of the insurrectionary Paris Commune, Robespierre was elected as a deputy to the French Convention in early September 1792, but was soon criticised for trying to establish a triumvirate or a dictatorship. In Spring 1793 he urged the creation of a "Sans-culotte army" to sweep away conspirators. In July he was appointed as a member of the powerful Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre is best known for his role during the "reign of Terror", during which he exerted his influence to suppress the Girondins to the right, the Hébertists to the left and the Dantonists in the centre. Robespierre was eventually brought down by his obsession with the vision of an ideal republic and his indifference to the human costs of installing it. The Terror ended with Robespierre's arrest on 9 Thermidor and his execution on the day after, events that initiated a period known as the Thermidorian Reaction.Are you enjoying Thermidor?
Thermidor (French pronunciation: [tɛʁmidɔʁ]) was the eleventh month in the French Republican Calendar. The month was named after the French word thermal which comes from the Greek word "thermos" which means heat....The 4th of Thermidor is "ryegrass" (French: "ivraie"). Here's the Thermador calendar page for contemplation:
Like all French Republican Calendar months, Thermidor lasted 30 days and was divided into three 10-day weeks called décades (decades). Every day had the name of an agricultural plant, except the 5th (Quintidi) and 10th day (Decadi) of every decade, which had the name of a domestic animal or an agricultural tool, respectively.
Thus articles A terrible NYT headline, "Robespierre’s America/We need to reclaim the spirit of 1776, not the certitudes of 1789"...
that is all articles A terrible NYT headline, "Robespierre’s America/We need to reclaim the spirit of 1776, not the certitudes of 1789"... This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
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