“Lying deep within the French Revolution were the
seeds of its own destruction because the concepts of liberty, equality, and
fraternity are mutually exclusive. A society can be formed around two of them,
but never all three. Liberty and equality, if they are strictly observed, will
obliterate fraternity; equality and fraternity must extinguish liberty; and fraternity
and liberty can only come at the expense of equality. If extreme equality of
outcome is the ultimate goal, as it was for the Jacobins, it will crush liberty
and fraternity.”
- from Napoleon:
A Life, by Andrew Roberts, Chapter 20, page 465
You, know, he’s right! I’ve heard that expression –
liberté, égalité, fraternité – a hundred times, and I never really thought about
it that way. It’s kinda like that expression “fast, cheap, or right – pick two!”
that you see hanging in some repair shops. It’s the inherent illogic of
revolutionary lingo.
I like that, and will have to file it under REVOLUTION,
FRENCH
in that vast cavernous storage repository located between the ears.
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