I have finished Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism. I posted a review on Amazon but have a few other thoughts about the book. It is a very interesting book and he has done a good job with the history. Chou En Lai was once famously quoted about the French Revolution. When asked his opinion of its consequences, he answered that “it is too soon to tell.” Even Iraq War critics use the anecdote in discussing historical analogies. Goldberg raises the issue of the French Revolution to assert that Robespierre is the philosophical father of the Progressive Movement of modern times.
In fact, Rousseau has been called the precursor of the modern pseudo-democrats such as Stalin and Hitler and the “people’s democracies.” His call for the “sovereign” to force men to be free if necessary in the interests of the “General Will” harks back to the Lycurgus of Sparta instead of to the pluralism of Athens; the legacy of Rousseau is Robespierre and the radical Jacobins of the Terror who followed and worshipped him passionately. In the 20th century, his influence is further felt by tyrants who would arouse the egalitarian passions of the masses not so much in the interests of social justice as social control. Let us take Rousseau for the literary genius he was and appreciate his contribution to history; let us look at his political philosophy with great skepticism.
Robespierre himself has spoken about this issue:
“Terror is nought but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is less a particular principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the fatherland.”
Maximillien Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Address, National Convention, 1794
The authoritarian temptation of the political left is the subject of Goldberg’s thesis. Fabian Socialists like George Bernard Shaw, American Progressives like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt all figure in a continuous line in Goldberg’s book. I think he makes excellent points. This essay on Robespierre makes several points that echo those of Goldberg.
Robespierre and his compatriots, especially Louis-Antoine Saint-Just and George Couthon, envisioned a French Republic based on virtue, wherein economic class distinctions would cease, wherein it would be criminal to own an excess of wealth, wherein the highest and noblest goal of any citizen would be service to the state.
Here is the origin of Socialism. Robespierre acknowledged a great debt to Rousseau:
From Rousseau, Robespierre adopted the Social Contract theory of government, which was later to be accepted by the Jacobins. Man is by nature good, but becomes corrupt through unjust institutions and laws; he is born free, but becomes a slave to injustice. Government is literally a contract entered into by people; each individual brings into the larger group a share of its power and authority. Moreover, the contract can be changed at any time the “general will” desires.
The conservative concept of freedom, property and the right “to be let alone” is not part of the “Social Contract” according to the Rousseau concept. A straight line is drawn from The Terror to “An Inconvenient Truth.”
I’ll have more to post on this later.