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$750 Worth of Equality
In France and in the European colonies of North America, two revolutions were fought over the same French ideas and key battles were turned by French naval cannon.
The principal idea on the rise was equality, which turned out to offer catchy slogans but few methods for governance. The ensuing chaos led to the rise of Napoleon in France; in post-revolution America, the same chaos produced only one strongman capable of pulling together all the important interests, the man who might have defeated George III to become George I if he cared to grasp for the main chance.
France’s return to autocracy as the newly minted United States continued to struggle with creating new democratic institutions could be explained by the “great man” theory or by economics or the peopling of the “new” continent might have created a politics sui generis. Some people point out the splendid equality of the guillotine, thought to be necessary to the French revolution but completely absent in North America.
In the Cherokee Nation, where I hold citizenship in addition to the U.S., you do not get to be an “elder” because you got old. It requires substantially more than age, and it’s not something you call yourself. It’s what others call you if they are so moved.
