In Defense of His Majesty

William Lind writes In Defense of His Majesty (Kaiser Wilhelm II) that:

... the unhappy fact is that Western civilization’s last chance of survival was probably a victory by the Central Powers in World War I. Their defeat let all the poisons of the French Revolution loose unchecked, which is the main reason that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool.

Emphasis Mine

There are many quotes like this about the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. For people like Mr. Lind, they see these as aberrations from the 'true' Western Civilization (whatever that this is). Do they want to return to feudalism when birth determined your choices in life? When the Lord had control over your life from which you could not legally escape? And when you had no private property?

The French Revolution was when Western Civilization was born in its present form. This was when Capitalism beat the crap out of Feudalism. Yes, this was a Capitalist revolution against the decaying feudal system. This victory proved the superiority of Capitalism over other existing economic systems: slavery; feudalism; barbarism; and hydraulic societies.

With the French Revolution came the notion of a nation and therefore patriotism. Before the revolution, there was the King of France, people who spoke various dialects of French (mostly), but no Frenchmen. You would have been a Parisian or the serf of some member of the nobility. With the revolution, France and Frenchmen came into being. Your identity was no longer linked to another human being but as citizen of a country.

A citizen had inalienable rights: property, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, suffrage, contracts, etc. Your rights no longer depended on which family you were born into.

Yes, I agree with Mr. Lind and others "... that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool." And this is a direct result of the victory result of Capitalism in the French Revolution.

The dominant morality and philosophy of any economic system is always that of the ruling class. So what we are is the "... moral and cultural cesspool" that the Capitalist ruling class has descended into. Think of the Kennedy clan who murder and rape almost with impunity. Think of Paris Hilton, Jenna and Barbara Bush, and their 'wild' ways.

The question for us is how do we keep the benefits of Capitalism while removing the moral corruption? For me, the answer is to remove the need for a ruling class and have the people control their own lives through a Communist society.