Liberté, égalité, fraternité...

[exedir]

Today, July 14th, 2013, is the 224th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in Paris, France and the beginning of the French Revolution.

It is been said that this event was predicated on the American Revolution but there were and are significant differences in how the events occurred and the results achieved in both revolutions. One difference was on how the British and French states were constituted and run, one a limited monarchy and the other absolute with seriously different governmental institutions and political histories which included for the British, a parliamentarian commonwealth without a king created by regicide a hundred years before either revolutions.

And of course, one was based in a new land with almost unlimited possibilities. The other a squalled, exploited, corrupt and exhausted state, divided in so many ways, with grievances centuries old and irreconcilable.

Now, more than 200 years after the American and French revolutions, it is interesting to reflect on the status of revolution across the world. Clearly revolution is not a guarantor of the success of the state and its people. The success of a state is the effort and investment made in the creation and continuation of those values and beliefs that can be sustained in the grinding and less glamorous activities necessary to make a country and a society operate to the benefit of all.

We are reminded of this effort for our country by the recent commemoration of our greatest battle of the Civil War, Gettysburg. We also see it everyday, whether we like it or not, as to the struggle of how we deal with justice, justice delivered vs. justice desired.

And we can see how difficult it is for others, for others to create a better society, a better way to live and a better way to govern with...liberté, égalité, fraternité...