What do American conservatives think of the French Revolution?

The French Revolution is exactly the kind of revolution you want to avoid. It was based on class envy. The fact that it got out of control is a bit of human nature. Which is why class envy and class warfare are not trivial concepts. read more

American conservatives generally look very unfavorably toward the French Revolution, because at the same time that the modern American conservative intellectual movement was starting to develop in the 1950s, there was a huge revival of interest in the works of Edmund Burke, the leading British opponent of the French Revolution. read more

A French political leader of the eighteenth century. A Jacobin, he was one of the most radical leaders of the French Revolution. He was in charge of the government during the Reign of Terror, when thousands of persons were executed without trial. After a public reaction against his extreme policies, he was executed without trial. read more

Very few of us today, even conservatives, can conceive of a world before the French Revolution. That’s because conservatism as a political movement didn’t begin until the French Revolution, as a counter-political response to it. Burke essentially created conservatism as a response to the revolutionary idealism of the FR. read more