Here's something startling in its clarity and uncomplicated in its theme

It's Michael Moriarty, the actor, writing about the French. The first striking moment in the piece is when he pointedly identifies the French Revolution as a communist revolution. It's not a ready convention to equate the former as an incidence of the latter. Perhaps he takes that from the book that inspired his article, Our Oldest Enemy by John J. Miller and Mark Molesky, but I'll hand it to Moriarty either way.

Here are three successive paragraphs from the article, each one sketched with a bold hand:

I now call Paris "the bunker." I suspect there was a Paris/Moscow phone call before Russian leader Vladimir Putin came out on behalf of Iran's nuclear dreams and, well, lied straight out. We're back to the Cold War, but with the enemy in a far more threatening position. The Politburo still couldn't get the big nuclear missiles on Cuban soil, but Iran is certainly within a closer delivery range than Russia. So, the stakes are being raised. With Pyongyang rattling loaded missiles in North Korea's silos and China pulling the same act that Putin is pulling with Iran, well, it's becoming quite a face-off, isn't it? But if anyone can stare down these nefarious plotters, it's George W. Bush.

When you add up the "progressive" secular adventures of the French État (such as legalization of the abortion pill), the mind of the French Revolution looks more Gothic than Gallic. Dr. Viktor Frankenstein would no doubt be favored by the French as the UN's new Secretary General. That former president Bill Clinton is campaigning for the job indicates how deeply ingrained the French God of Thought is in the mindset of America's intelligentsia.

My recent obituary of playwright Arthur Miller and my estimation of his place in world history provoked a pro-choice woman to defend her acceptance of abortion. When I remarked that the advocates for a New World Order firmly believe no one exists until they are aware they exist (cf. philosopher René Descartes), and that since the first trimester of gestation may not yet enable thought, this "scientific" fact justifies early abortion, the lady replied that destroying the fetus is no more insensitive than taking a brain-dead patient off life support. Of all my encounters with the pro-choice lobby, this was the most shocking and yet revealing comment I'd ever heard.
Pointer from John J. Miller at NRO's The Corner.

Comments

I've long seen the French Revolution as the political point of departure that led to it all, and what you are saying is consistent with that, I just don't recall seeing it flat out called a communist revolution, just like that, before, although that's fully the implication one would take from the conceptualization of it as the real beginning of the Cold War (which would make the Cold War a struggle that encompasses almost the entire history of the U.S., so it is a bit of concept inflation on that score).
Ernest said…
It isn't as much of a stretch as most people think. I was plainly taught by my history and philosophy professors that the Russian revolutionaries saw themselves as the intellectual and political heirs of the French Revolution.

Everything from the fact that the originial rebellions saw great support from the nobility and bourgeois, with their subsequent destruction/exile at the hands of the mob, right down to the Marat=Kirov parallel of terror is instructive.
Putin is probably just trying to be a European. He thinks that if you cooperate with Islamists that they'll be nice to you. So he reaches out to the Iranians with the idea that Islamists inside Russia will relax their terrorism. If that is what Putin actually believes, he is as naive as Chamberlain. On the other hand it could be that Russian political culture is so dissipated that rearguard actions against reality are the best choice available.

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