up this program, Saint Just said, "Children belong tothe State," and advocated taking boys from their families at the age offive.5So much of modern statism, with all of its horror and disregard forindividualism, began with the French Revolution. The "purge," the"commune," the color red as a symbol of statism, even the political termsLeft, Right, and Center came to us from this period. The only thing thatended the carnage, inside France, at least, was "a man on horseback,"Napoleon Bonaparte. The French Revolution had brought forth first anarchy,then statism, and finally, dictatorship. Had it not been for the unyieldingspirit of the average Frenchman and France's position as the largestcountry in Europe, France might never have recovered.Now contrast all of this with the American Revolution, more correctlycalled the War for Independence. The American Revolution was differentbecause, as Irving Kristol has pointed out, it was "a mild and relativelybloodless revolution. A war was fought to be sure, and soldiers died inthat war. But . . . there was none of the butchery which we have come toaccept as a natural concomitant of revolutionary warfare. . . . There wasno 'revolutionary justice'; there was no reign of terror; there were nobloodthirsty proclamations by the Continental Congress."4The American Revolution was essentially a "conservative" movement, foughtto conserve the freedoms America had painstakingly developed since the1620s during the period of British "salutary neglect", in reality, a periodof laissez faire government as far as the colonies were concerned. A senseof restraint pervades this whole period. In the Boston Tea Party, no onewas hurt and no property was damaged except for the tea. One Patriot evenreturned the next day to replace a lock on a sea chest that had beenaccidentally broken.7 This was not the work of anarchists who wanted todestroy everything in their way, but of Englishmen who simply wanted aredress of grievances...
