I gave you Georges Gusdorf and his comparative history of the American and French revolutions¹ on the 4th of July, so a second helping for Bastille Day seems appropriate—a day late though, for reasons totally unrelated to any sort of celebration of this disgraceful historical event.

Taken and translated from Chapter VII, Les Etats-Unis et la Révolution Française ("The United States and the French Revolution")

1789 is a bout of delirium (...). The triumphant Revolution sees no limits to a new beginning, in the apocalyptical atmosphere of the [revolutionary] Journées ("Days") where everything is possible, and the inconceivable becomes reality. The old, massive Bastille falls upon the first blow. The edifice rotten from within; a few pushes were enough to bring down this paper tiger. The revolutionary leaders realize that they hold the magic power to erase and recreate the world. With an astounding speed, and facing no resistance, they learn how to turn their aspirations into law. Intoxication by unchecked power brings abusive power and tyranny.

(...)

On July the 14th, the fall of the Bastille symbolizes that of the regime at the hand of a popular authority replacing the King's and the government's (...) The revolution snowballs under the weight of this logic of the absurd called Terror by its instigators. Under the horrified eyes of the Occident, the killing machine exterminates men and communities whole; those who initiated [the Terror], soon falling under its wheels, relinquish their lives to the sanguinary Nemesis. When even the most ruthless amongst the killers, Robespierre and his friends, get sent to the guillotine, they hardly defend themselves [for] if the guillotine is the symbol and the consumption of democracy, the convicts are therefore already wrong. (...) The survivors among the terrorists [eventually] adjure an energetic soldier [Napoleon Bonaparte—DF] to save them from themselves, by putting an end to the inextricable fatality of self-extermination.

(...)

Through some sort of collective hysteria, the Revolution of Human Rights became the contrary of what she pretended to be. (...) The motherland's altar turned into a killing machine; no reasonable argumentation could possibly justify la Terreur ("The Terror")

Gusdorf continues, bringing an eerie analogy (considering he wrote these words in the late 80s) that resonates loud and clear in today's context:

Revolution is a modern form of holy war—perpetuated nowadays by Islamic Jihad², a mix of revolution and crusade. It doesn't seem that these liturgies of death, such as they are under the influence of a rabies theologica, whichever it may be, can contribute to the progress of human spirit and civilization.

I don't know about you, but I believe this reference to Islamic Jihad as an illustration of the nefarious nature of the French revolution and its brainchild—Terror, as a political mean to establish an absolutist new order of society—by a French thinker back in 1988 should give a moment of pause to a lot of people who pretend to explain the "root causes" of the latest wave of Islamic terrorism through various preposterous reasons, ranging from the stupid to the disgustingly self-critical.

Gusdorf goes on, and slightly touches on some of the most famous—and genuine—legacies of the French Revolution:

One finds hard to understand how the champions of legal safety and respect of the law could turn into angels exterminators, vowing to death, without judgment or after a parody of judgment, a huge number of "suspects" of all kind. Replacing the divine right of the king, the divine right of the people begets a sacred fury that feeds upon itself. The instinct of death runs wild in the politicians' and the pamphleteers' addresses, (and) in the bloodthirsty orders given to the representatives and generals tasked with the repression of the insurgent provinces. Revolutionary justice is worse than the infamous dragonnades directed by Louis the XIVth against irreducible Protestants [the Huguenots, many of whom, choosing exile rather than death, would make far happier citizens of Great-Britain and yet-to-be-born United States—DF]. The policy is that of the scorched earth, and the order of the day slaughter of the population by the sword. The destruction of Oradour by Hitler's SS, and the massacre of its 600 inhabitants are legitimately considered a barbaric crime against mankind. In Vendée, in Brittany, Lyon, in the South-East of France and elsewhere, the executive orders of the Convention resulted in hundreds of Oradour—French against French (...) Hitler, at least, was coherent with himself and enforcing his doctrine; the revolutionary philanthropists professed their love for Mankind while acting as the executioners of their own people, following this logique de l'absurde that finds another contemporary illustration in Stalin.

In 1794, even though the Republic is facing no credible threat anymore—foreign or domestic—and the "peasants army" of the Vendée has been crushed by the Revolution the year before, the Convention orders its Colonnes Infernales ("Infernal Columns") to tore through Vendée and, quote, "exterminate the people of Vendée", "cleanse the soil of Liberty from this accursed race" and "destroy the Vendée". Turreau himself, the commander of the Infernal Columns, proclaims that the "Vendée must become a national cemetery"—the resulting and undiscriminating exactions and carnage against a largely submissive population of men and women, children and elders, by the armies of the young French Republic is on par with, and announces the modern days systematic massacres at the hand of all totalitarian regimes from Lenin's Soviet Union to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Yet beyond Vendée, and as Gusdorf briefly mentions, it is a larger part of France—far larger than what the official line on the French revolution³ want you to believe—that found itself on the receiving end of the new central regime's insane violence; for alongside the simplistic concepts of Left and Right in politics, the French revolution is also the cradle of Terrorism—quite literally—and Genocide, in its most modern and ideologically charged meaning.

That explains why, despite the headlines of most news outlets around the world, I do not see anything "controversial" in Nicolas Sarkozy's choice of Bashar al-Assad as special guest of the 14th of July parade this year: having the head of a terrorist State celebrating the birth of the motherland of State Terrorism seems rather appropriate, actually.

That also explain why I never celebrate Bastille day, and why you're getting this 14th of July entry on the 15th—take my silence on the 14th as a sign of respect to the hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens, slaughtered by the French Republic in the name of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Well then, as I was in the mood for poking fun at the Cult of Global Warming, I went about hitting various search engines to find funny carbon-based facts and other Green gobbledygook for inspiration.

I shall tell you right now: the results far surpassed my expectations.

For those of you too busy to click the hyperlinks, here it is, in a carbon neutral nutshell: setting the bar higher on the Ridicule Scale, these two teams of software development geniuses came up with applications to calculate—you guessed already—one's carbon footprint and offer advice as to how the criminal emitter can reduce it¹—the first for Windows PCs, and the other for some Google mobile phones.

That's right, computers and cellphones. These epitomes of both the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age. These achievements of more than a century of innovation made only possible by fossil fuels and highly efficient carbon emissions—considering the excellent productivity/pollution ratio of said fuels.

Now, I am going to give you a full empty paragraph free of charge, to let you ponder on the humungous amount of cubic tons of carbon needed to build, launch, operate and maintain a fully working computerized and telecommunicating world versus whatever "sustainable lifestyle" these ludicrous bits of software purportedly promote. There:

...

Yeah, I knew you'd laugh a bit. But apparently, oblivious of the crushing paradoxes, these guys are serious and intend to lecture the world with predictable and politically correct "solutions" against carbon emissions... On technological devices that thrive at the top of one of the most energy hungry sector of human activity. For this big fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, that type of software developers instantaneously casts images of Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, AKA Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Half as amusing though.

Or perhaps this is the great scourge brought upon Humanity by (a somewhat) unbridled Capitalism. By lifting scores of people and nations out of sheer abject poverty and away from a subsistence economy, endowing the greater part of said nations with a level of wealth and riches unprecedented in Mankind's history, we end up with an awful lot of people with far too much time on their hands, cult-like ideologies in their hearts (global cooling, wait, warming, no-no-no cooling is nigh, the End of the World live on 01-01-00 00:00:00, the climate, it changes! Polar bears can't swim, Al is All, etc) and ridiculous software designs in their Collectivist minds.

I, too, miss the time when Man didn't have to worry about any other footprints than those he'd left with his own feet²—Death to the Evil Cars!—while prodding Mother Earth to scrap some meager yet oh-so natural food²—Death to the Evil Wal*Mart!

I, too, miss the time when you'd measure a man's worth by the amount of dirt he'd dug in a hard day's work, and not the length of useless computer code he'd typed²—Death to the Evil Computers!

I, too, miss the time when Life was so much simpler and closer to Mother Earth: naked monkey sees food, naked monkey tries to catch food, naked monkey even had a chance to eat sometimes, when lucky or when food too slow or too old²—Death to the Evil Civilization!

So despite the fact that it will simply overblown your very own carbon footprint just to run it (on carbon emitting computers and all that Evil Stuff) this software looks excellent. I'm just weary that they might not go the extra mile, and provide us, careless carbon producing trousered apes, with the means to TAKE ACTION rather than simply measure the size of our carbon footprint, and brag about who's got the biggest or humiliate he who has got the smallest³ and steal his girlfriend. I mean, if these guys were really serious about messing around with our personal carbon (rather than being just a bunch of unimaginative, fashionable and conformist neo-Yuppies in organic cotton underwear that is), then their software should work like so:

1. Switch on the 'puter (or the cellphone).
2. Click to start Carbon Annihilator 1.0, and evaluate the user's carbon footprint.
3. No matter the result, get a message that reads "TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT, PLEASE DESTROY THIS COMPUTER⁴ NOW AND DROP DEAD FORTHWITH."

At least that's how I would design it.

I wanted to make sure this bit of comment (#3586 here) from BlueStarMom, whom I'm truly honored to count as a regular guest on this blog, wouldn't go unnoticed:

Just to let you know- my son just re-enlisted.  He has deployed to Iraq 3 times. 

I am very proud of him and all of our military.

(and NO John Kerry- he didn’t re-up because he couldn’t do anything else!)

Indeed, and furthermore, the notion that one would sign up (three times!) to fight a fierce, difficult and crucial conflict just because one cannot find a job looks totally stupid an argument to anybody but a self-infatuated, clueless Vietcong hack like John Kerry—particularly considering the thriving U.S. economy at the time this slipped through one of his orifices, which gives even less weight to this "pearl" among Kerry's many elitist remarks, and his disparaging several generations of America's warrior class.

You don't enlist three times in wartime out of desperation, boredom or sheer stupidity. It takes fortitude, spirit and an amount of courage beyond that of most of us—and I hope BlueStarMom will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite sure this cannot be anything else than the result of a conscious and educated choice by a smart and determined man.

Moreover, and since we're speaking about the pompous Defeatists & Democrats of the age, it looks like BlueStarMom isn't "bitter" and doesn't "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like [her]" either.

Hey Hussein-Barack Obama, you listening?

Blue Star Mom and proud of it!!!

Without a doubt pride is your prerogative here, and I hope you will accept my respect and gratitude. Indeed, lest we forget—and despite all the smugness and scorn coming out of those parts of the Free World that manage to be as arrogant as they're irrelevant (Yeah, I'm looking at you, La Douce France)—just like they checked and defeated Communist expansionism over the world (and Western Europe particularly) during the Cold War, Americans are once again pulling a large part of the hard work, paying the bill and protecting all of us against the very same Islamic absolutism we Europeans hardly managed to keep at bay for centuries.

So my deepest gratitude goes to you BlueStarMom, and to all those who, like your son, renew their commitment to the defense of Civilization, knowing perfectly (quote: "These servicemembers know the cost of war and they are still re-enlisting, Hill said"—John Kerry, call your office) that they put themselves into "the most austere conditions". This may sound like a cliché, but it is not: you are, literally and effectively, making this world a better place for us all.

Bless your son's spirit, bless your mother heart.

French thinker Georges Gusdorf, in his superb comparative history of the French and American revolutions, circa 1988:

The Constitution of the United States is a gentlemen's agreement between a number of the nation's representatives, devising quietly a text meant to ensure the good management of the federal State's commons. The document would pass into law only after approval by [...] each of the States, and ratification by at least 9 States over the 13. An opinion campaign thus ran for a few months, in 1787-1788, where both partisans and adversaries of a strong central government confronted their views. (...) the writings of the polemicists stemmed from good common sense and a quality of views that contrasts with the hateful and apocalyptic violence of the French revolutionary pamphleteers. In particular [...] The Federalist, an exegesis and a profound justification of the new law, remains after 200 years a classic of the United States constitutional law and political science, whereas the collection of Pêre Duchêne and that of l'Ami du Peuple [The ghastly Marat's¹ "The People's Friend"² newspaperish filth—DF] belong to the museum of the horrors of rhetoric—or that of the rhetoric of horrors.

(...)

The Constitution of the United States is a work of reason, negotiated by an elite of well-wishing men, caring for the common good, whereas the French revolutionary constitutions are the products of exalted passions. Hence the resilience of the first, and the extreme fragility of the latter, doomed as they were under the pressure of the street, in an End of the World atmosphere.

(...)

America's insurgents took arms to ensure a freedom they already owned. Whatever the emotions of the various crisises, the violence of the popular revolts and the valor of the fighters, liberty, in the United States predates 1776-1777, 1783 or 1787; it is not conquered over the "tyrant" of London; it does not preside to the instauration of a new order of things [...] if the colons revolted, it is because they felt they were in risk of being deprived from prerogatives that had always been theirs. Here, without a doubt, lies a fundamental difference between [the revolutions] of America and that of France.

(...)

Upon the ratification of the Constitution, the state of Massachusetts, who fears the excessive use of power by the central government, only agrees under the condition that a series of amendments securing the citizens' fundamental liberties (religion, press, assembly, petition, the right to bear arms, trial by jury, etc.) would be added to the federal law. Voted in December 1791, these ten amendments, that compose the Americans' Bill of Rights, enounce rights they were already enjoying for a long time; they went without saying and that is why they were not explicitly written into the Constitution; indeed it goes even better saying it, yet they were not a conquest but merely an acknowledgment of a legal and actual situation that wasn't threatened.

(...)

Teaching in a US university, I asked my students (...) to establish a list of the major events that marked out, in their own opinion, the history of the West. Two of them cited as the initial date the year 1492: Columbus' discovery of America. One could argue that the question had not been properly understood, but these answers are characteristic of a state of mind; for these young Americans, the invention of their continent marks a new beginning in the history of the world.

Translated by yours truly from "Les révolutions de France et d'Amérique: la violence et la sagesse" ("The Revolutions of France and America: violence and wisdom") by Georges Gusdorf—putting to rest a few of the most vicious French revolution falsities, thoroughly debunking any notion that the American revolution owed anything to French Enlightenment thinkers (the official Party line in France, incidentally) and that, as Jefferson quickly figured out, far from being similar in nature and spirit the French revolution was and remains America's war of Independence evil and totalitarian twin, and a true antithesis of the Great Experiment.

4th of July, birthday of a new beginning. Happy birthday.