> CB; Wow. I gotta admit uhhh this seems truer than I had thought of
> before. The Constitution was a counter- revolution ! Thanks for that
> reference.
It seems like this is always a problem with those revolutionary doctrines: some of the plebs who are roped into fighting for them come out the other end believing them. Here's another quote from Michael Tigar and Madeline Levy's book "Law and the Rise of Capitalism" that seems to sum it up:
"Revolutions do not always do away with all the old institutions, but keep two kinds of rules derived from the past: those which reflect concessions wrested by the now-victorious class from the old regime, and those which--as in the case of France with marital customs--reassure the population that nothing too drastic has been done. After the people have done their work in ousting the old regime by force of arms, the new regime has need of rules to force the people to return to their homes and stop fighting before the revolution endangers the interests of the newly dominant class. The Cromwellian reaction against the Levelers and the White Terror of the French Revolution are two examples of this. We shall have occasion later to examine the proclamation of the Code Napoleon, which ably combined, in the rhetoric of a firmly Bonapartist Consil d'Etat, the natural-law ideals of the Revolution with assurances that, while everything had changed, everything had stayed the same." (57-58)
They don't get to the US constitution, but more and more when I hear Conservatives talk about being strict constitutionalists, I think your idea of it being a counter-revolution is clearly apt.
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