Oppressed people will press back.
By and large, the American Revolution was successful because Englishmen were asserting their rights as Englishmen against the British Government. Resorting to history, tradition, and faith, they established a firm ground for their rebellion, which bolstered their efforts without resorting to rampant destruction and anarchy.
In both instances, the people were asserting their rights, not detracting from others'.
The French Revolution, rejecting all trappings of history, respect, and honor, waged war en masse against the mass, the the middle class masses, and amassed wealth, promoting ideas of liberty, equality, and brotherhood, when in fact it was chronic carnage of one class of intellectuals against the middle class, and any one who defended religion, order, and natural law. A Revolution only for its powerful resurgence of destruction, the French Revolution devolved into tyranny then dictatorship, in which everyone treated as equals become cogs in the wheel of the monolithic state, with a Corsican dictator trashing the Continent in its wake.
The French Revolution waged retribution against classes of people whom low-brow demagogues denounced as traitors to the French people. Rather than restoring an equitable order of peace and commerce, the ongoing terror that fed into the corrupt Directory paved the way for the faux-revival of the Roman Empire, with Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, then short-statured and short-lived Emperor. Vengeance gave way to greater servitude, and no one was the better for it.
The Revolutions of 1848 were also a war of class against class, rather than man against tyrannical government. When insurrections broke out all over Europe, the raving masses were not demanding freedom from government, but instead expected the government to do more for their class instead of respect the rights of all men. French men did not bind themselves together, but splintered across class and loyalties. In Germany, the confused uprisings petered out when King William of Prussia refused to accept a pan-Germanic crown "from the gutter." i.e. the horde of writhing confused masses more interested in bloodshed and change than the proper respect of man as free agent, endowed with God-given, natural rights.
It's in the backdrop of 1848 that the world must assess the Arab Spring, the revolutions that have swept Arab dictators from their staunch leadership in a populist upswing of resentment brimming over from rampant ongoing poverty and neglect.
The Arab peoples are angry. They want revenge. From the harsh atrocities of the Assad regime to the 42-year insanity-tyranny of the carpet-clad Libyan colonel, dissidents and derelicts alike are rising up, striking back at the abject tyranny which they have endured for decades.
Starting with a despondent fruit vendor in rural Tunisia immolating himself in final, frustrated protest, to the enraged masses across the country, including lawyers and other allied intellectuals, the Tunisian people expressed their outrage and demanded redress. When enough people got angry -- appalled not just at the cold cruelty of the Tunisian president, but at the unjust treatment toward the first round of protesters -- they mobilized to oust Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Yet for all the outrage, only now are the Tunisian people instituting new elections. Yet for all the instant courage that toppled one regime, will the Tunisian people as individuals vote and invite a new order, one that respects mankind as a creation of Almighty God? And will they respect the right and integrity of other states, including the United States, Europe, and the Jewish State?
The Arab peoples are frustrated. They want to be free, but they cannot access freedom if they will not respect its essence, which is individual and eternal. From the Baathist parties of Iraq and Syria, to the pan-Arabism of Moammar Gadhafi, the Arab people are accustomed to a socialist state, one that gives to the people by taking from the richest or the rest, whoever is still alive to fleece.
Moammar Gadhafi instigated such a regime, more totalitarian the socialist, but statist nonetheless. Socialist regimes have not engendered individualist responses, especially in revolutions that have turned into retribution with no establishment for restoration.
The world has witnessed the savagery of populist rage, dragging a broken man, pulled from the heights of pomp and circumstance to be dragged in the dust like one of the dregs of humanity, and the summarily and unceremoniously executed.
Such was the end of British Monarch Charles the First, although he received a kangaroo court trial at the hands of the rebels, who could not justify their courted vigilante justice. Still, they had sufficient bile and unrest to execute the man.
Following the French Revolution, the masses put King Louis XVI on trial, not for doing anything wrong, necessarily, but for who he was, what he represented to the frustrated, bloodthirsty, hateful masses, the epitome of noblesse oblige , resentment against royal reaction that had impoverished the French countryside and peasantry for hundreds of years.
The French, like the English, wanted a scapegoat, someone on whom they could exhaust their wrath, someone who would shoulder their final judgment, making up for the pent up rage, unsatisfied for centuries. Despite the hearty and informed pleas of Thomas Paine, the French demanded the death of their king, only to witness the unleashed tyranny of the terror, for a nation will not long abide a power-vacuum.
Such was the public, pitiful, and appalling fate of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. more style than substance, he wasted away on the hood of a truck, shot, and held to open display by the open, hostile masses.
Such will be the fate of Hosni Mubarak, deposed Egyptian President and former ally of the United States and Israel.
This retribution is not restoration, and revolution that does not restore the dignity of all is a revolution that will fail for all.
