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Consider if the world had never had a revolution the current state we would be in. I don't buy that's a better picture.

• parasubvert 13y ago
  In most cases, revolution was dynamite that blew up the old regime, and had little bearing on creating a desirable society and regime to take its place. In most of Europe this happened through centuries of political reform. We like to romanticize the few revolutions that had positive outcomes (America), but also downplay the utterly disastrous consequences of others (France). We also like to ignore that today's terrorists are often what we used to call revolutionaries. (Was 9/11 was not Act 1 in a revolution in US governance?) My point is that violence exists, and revolutions happen. But they exist to destroy, not to create. Annoying, compromising, good old politics haVe to clean up the mess and replace it with something better. That's rare.