Revolting...

The Gordon Riots - John Seymour Lucas (Source)

From time to time throughout history, the people decide that they have had quite enough of their rulers, their policies, laws, and bureaucracies. Sometimes a change in a law will cause unrest, even rioting, amongst those who don't like what has changed. In many cases the police will be called out and a show of force will suffice to cause the angry crowds to disperse.

Sometimes that is not enough, sometimes violence will be employed against the crowd. At times in the past blood has been shed. Often, that will cause the crowds to flee. Sometimes they won't take to the streets again, they have been sufficiently cowed to trouble the government no more. Sometimes though, they simply withdraw, treat their wounded, bury their dead, and start planning. Organizing. Plotting.

That was the way for centuries throughout the world. That was the way of the world when kings and emperors sat upon thrones and ruled by "divine right." So they claimed.

In the United States the yoke of monarchy was thrown off in the period from 1775 to 1783 which we in this country generally refer to as The Revolutionary Wars. In some ways it was a clean break. The British Army went home, we stayed and began building a country. Needless to say, not everyone was happy with the outcome. Many Americans left the United States, returning to Great Britain, the Mother Country from which their ancestors had departed. Many of those people felt no more at home there than they did in the new United States. They weren't really welcomed in either place. Many fled to Canada.

But the revolution was over. The enemy was gone. Many revolutions did not have such outcomes.

Nearly bankrupted by the support provided to the United States, the French government was on shaky ground. New taxes were raised, but the people weren't having it. The French Revolution ensued. Many of the nobility fled France, many could not and died. The kings of Europe didn't care for all this talk of Liberty, Brotherhood, and Equality. They invaded.

The French rallied and managed to defeat the armies of the kings and emperors. But the monarchs vowed to return and fight until the revolution was crushed. Which led to the rise of Napoléon and a series of bloody wars lasting for years. The effects of those wars echoed into the 20th Century. Whereby an exhausted France, having lost thousands of young men in the wars of the Revolution and the Emperor barely managed to stand against the Germans in 1914.

They were unable to stand at all in 1940.

The Russian Revolution was brutal and eventually led to the virtual enslavement of half of Europe. Literally millions died directly due to that revolution and millions more died at the hands of the brutes who seized power in Russia.

Mao's revolution in China also killed millions. It caused the enslavement of millions more. Don't think so? Talk to a Tibetan, or a Mongolian.

Revolutions are nasty things. When I wrote of the Second American Revolution the other day, I mentioned the cost in lives, over 900,000 Americans died. Out of a population of approximately 32 million. Think of it, over two percent of the population died in a period of four years. The bitterness and anger still lingers to this day.

This election year frightens me like no other. The nation seems torn, at least the media wants us to believe that is the case. Many will listen to that divisive poison. I'm not one of them. No matter who the candidates are this November, think carefully of the direction you want this nation to go in. Very carefully.

Voting is the answer, making your voice heard to your representatives is the answer. Revolution is not.

Trust me, you don't want this...
Barricade rue Soufflot - Horace Vernet (Source)