The Fench Revolution's backhground

The broad background of the French Revolution was colored by a number of overarching circumstances. The first of these was the rise of absolute monarchies everywhere in Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In England, absolute government was instituted by the Tudor monarchs and continued by the Stuarts, James VI and Charles I. Their inflated conceptions of monarchy and their attempts to undermine Parliament eventually resulted in the Civil War (1642–1649) between the supporters of the king and those of Parliament. The latter, led by Oliver Cromwell, were victorious. Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and England was ruled for a short spell by Parliament. However, the so-called Restoration of 1660 placed Charles II upon the throne.

Central Europe and Spain were also under the rule of despots, some enlightened such as Frederick II the Great of Prussia (1740–1786) and Joseph II of Austria (1780– 1790), and others more repressive such as Catherine the Great of Russia (1762–1796), who crushed a serf rebellion in 1773–1774. In France, however, the situation was dire.

Henry IV, founder of the Bourbon dynasty, had promoted industry and manufacture and effectively minimized the sovereignty of the feudal nobility. The next three Bourbon kings, Louis XIV (1643–1715), Louis XV (1715–1774), and Louis XVI (1774–1792), took to new extremes the arrogation of power and the instruments of justice. Louis XIV had declared “l’état, c’est moi,” and both of his successors professed the divine right of kings.

Hence, the French Revolution was in part a reaction against the excesses of absolute government which had grown both in theory and practice since the fourteenth century.

Another factor was the economic transformation of society. The fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries had witnessed tendencies which would later foster the growth of capitalism.By the seventeenth century, England, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal,and Holland had become imperial powers; trade became a worldwide rather than a national or local phenomenon. By the end of the seventeenth century the bourgeoisie had achieved economic hegemony.

Another economic cause was the survival of a feudal system of privileges, whereby the higher clergy and certain classes of nobles monopolized government. Peasants resented the fees and land taxes they were obliged to pay to their lords; and the urban masses suffered greatly from high prices. The political causes included a despotic monarchy, an unsystematic mode of government, finance, taxation, and law.

The intellectual influences stemmed largely from the Enlightenment . The more specific influences on the French Revolution included Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), which justified the new political system in England that prevailed after the English revolution of 1688. Locke condemned despotic monarchy and the absolute sovereignty of parliaments and suggested that the people had a right to resist tyranny. Voltaire advocated an enlightened monarchy or republic governed by the bourgeois classes. Baron de Montesquieu also influenced the first stage of the French Revolution, advancing a liberal theory based on a separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau exerted a powerful impact on the second stage of the Revolution through his theories of democracy, egalitarianism, and the evils of private property, as advocated in his Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.

Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth

" Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth: His light (in the universe) may be likened (to the light of) a lamp in a niche: the lamp is in a glass shade: the glass shade is like a glittering star and lamp is lit with the olive oil of a blessed tree which is neither eastern nor western: its oil is (so fine) as if it were going to shine forth by itself though no fire touched it (as though all the means of increasing) light upon light (were provided ); Allah guides to His light whomever He wills. He cites parables to make the Message clear to the people; He has perfect knowledge of everything. " 

The physical light is but a reflection of the true Light in the world of Reality, and that true Light is Allah. We can only think of Allah in terms of our phenomenal experience, and in the phenomenal world, light is the purest thing we know.
The first three points in the Parable center around the symbols of the Niche, the Lamp, and the Glass.
The niche is an opening in a wall which is not a window, fairly high from the ground, in which a light (before the days of electricity) was usually placed. Its height enabled it to diffuse the light in the room and minimized the shadows.
So with the spiritual Light: it is placed high above worldly things: it has a niche or habitation of its own, in Revelation and other Signs of Allah; its access to men is by a special Way, open to all, yet closed to those who refuse its rays. The Lamp is the core of the spiritual Truth, which is the real illumination; the Niche is nothing without it.
The Glass is the transparent medium through which the Light passes. It protects the light from moths and other forms of low life (lower motives in man) and from gusts of wind (passions) ...
The glass by itself does not shine. But when the light comes into it, it shines like a brilliant star. So men of God, who preach Allah’s Truth, are themselves illuminated by Allah’s Light and become like illuminating media through which that Light spreads and permeates human life.
The mystic Olive is not localized. It is neither of the East nor the West. It is universal, for such is Allah’s Light.

اللَّهُ نُورُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ ۚ مَثَلُ نُورِهِ كَمِشْكَاةٍ فِيهَا مِصْبَاحٌ ۖ الْمِصْبَاحُ فِي زُجَاجَةٍ ۖ الزُّجَاجَةُ كَأَنَّهَا" كَوْكَبٌ دُرِّيٌّ يُوقَدُ مِن شَجَرَةٍ مُّبَارَكَةٍ زَيْتُونَةٍ لَّا شَرْقِيَّةٍ وَلَا غَرْبِيَّةٍ يَكَادُ زَيْتُهَا يُضِيءُ وَلَوْ لَمْ تَمْسَسْهُ نَارٌ ۚ نُّورٌ عَلَىٰ نُورٍ ۗ يَهْدِي اللَّهُ لِنُورِهِ مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَيَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْأَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ ۗ وَاللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ "

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

Known as the founder of French symbolism (though not himself part of the movement), and often associated with the artistic decadence and aestheticism of the later nineteenth century, Baudelaire was born in Paris where he lived a bohemian life, adopting the artistic posture of a dandy, devoted to beauty and disdainfully aloof from the vulgar bourgeois world of materialism and commerce .

Baudelaire is often credited with expressing one of the first modernistic visions, a vision of the sordidness, sensuality,

and corruption of city life, a disposition that profoundly influenced modernist writers such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Baudelaire’s famous or infamous collection of poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), was published in 1857 and became the subject of a trial for obscenity in the same year for including some lesbian poems.

Baudelaire contracted syphilis and was paralyzed by a stroke before his death.

Karl Marx's thoughts

As with all socialists, Marx’s main objection to capitalism was that one particular class owned the means of economic production: “The bourgeoisie . . . has centralized means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.”

The correlative of this is the oppression and exploitation of the working classes: “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed; a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.

These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity.”

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production . . . The need of a constantly expanding market . . . chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.”

Am lit

   ♥   ღ

American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of  the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived. As a result, Native American oral literature is quite diverse. 

Tribes maintained their own religions — worshiping gods, animals, plants, or sacred persons.

Systems of government ranged from democracies to councils of elders to theocracies.

Indian stories, for example, glow with reverence for nature as a spiritual as well as physical mother.

Examples of almost every oral genre can be found in American Indian literature: lyrics, chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous anecdotes, incantations, riddles, proverbs, epics, and legendary histories.

In one well-known creation story, told with variations among many tribes, a turtle holds up the world. In a Cheyenne version, the creator, Maheo, has four chances to fashion the world from a watery universe. He sends four water birds diving to try to bring up earth from the bottom. The snow goose, loon, and mallard soar high into the sky and sweep down in a dive, but cannot reach bottom; but the little coot, who cannot fly, succeeds in bringing up some mud in his bill. Only one creature, humble Grandmother Turtle, is the right shape to support the mud world Maheo shapes on her shell — hence the Indian name for America, “Turtle Island.”

The songs or poetry, like the narratives, range from the sacred to the light and humorous: There are lullabies, war chants, love songs..

A Chippewa song runs:

A loon I thought it was

But it was

My love’s

splashing oar.

The Indian contribution to America is greater than is often believed. The hundreds of Indian words in everyday

American English include “canoe,” “tobacco,” “potato,” “moccasin,” “moose,” “persimmon,” “raccoon,” “tomahawk,” and “totem.”

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

In his monumental study entitled The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon listed five reasons that the enormous empire collapsed:
1. The increase in divorce, undermining the institution of the family;
2. The imposition of higher taxes for bread and circuses;
3. The drive for pleasure, sports becoming more exciting and brutal;
4. The people lost their faith.
But the most important was the fifth reason:
5. The existence of an internal conspiracy, working to undermine the government from within, all the time that the government was proclaiming that Rome's enemy was external.
Gibbon reported that the conspiracy was building huge armaments for protection against both real and imaginary external enemies, all the while they were literally destroying the empire from within.
These causes have parallels in today's world as well.

The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential to social cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political authority. The menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with the complexity of the society threatened, and it must appear, at least, to affect the inure society. 

The Unseen Hand

American Entry Into WW II

... But as the war in Europe continued, America's leaders were attempting to get America involved, even though the American people didn't want to become part of it. Roosevelt, the presidential candidate, was promising the American people that the Roosevelt administration would remain neutral should he be re-elected. Others knew better. One, for instance, was General Hugh Johnson, who said: "I know of no well informed Washington observer who isn't convinced that, if Mr. Roosevelt is elected (in 1940), he will drag us into war at the first opportunity, and that, if none presents itself, he will make one."
Roosevelt had two opportunities to involve America in World War II: Japan was at war with China, and Germany was at war with England, France and other countries. Both war zones presented plenty of opportunities to involve the American government in the war, and Roosevelt was quick to seize upon the opportunities presented.
Roosevelt's public efforts to involve America, while ostensibly remaining neutral, started in August, 1940, when the National Guard was voted into Federal service for one year. This was followed in September by the Selective Service Act, also for one year's duration.
But the key to America's early involvement occurred on September 28, 1940, when Japan, Germany and Italy signed the Tripartite Treaty. This treaty required that any of the three nations had to respond by declaring war should any one of the other three be attacked by any of the Allied nations.
This meant that should Japan attack the United States, and the United States responded by declaring war against Japan, it would automatically be at war with the other two nations, Germany and Italy.
Roosevelt now knew that war with Japan meant war with Germany.
His problem was solved. He had made secret commitments to Winston Churchill and the English government to become involved in the war against Germany and he knew "... that the only way he could fulfill his secret commitments to Churchill to get us into the war, without openly dishonoring his pledges to the American people to keep us out, was by provoking Germany or Japan to attack."
Roosevelt and Churchill had conspired together to incite an incident to allow America's entry into the war. According to Churchill:
The President had said that he would wage war but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces.
The United States Navy was taking over the convoy route to Iceland.
The President's orders to these escorts were to attack any U-boat which showed itself, even if it were two or three hundred miles away from the convoy...
Everything was to be done to force "an incident."
Hitler would be faced with the dilemma of either attacking the convoys and clashing with the United States Navy or holding off,thus "giving us victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. It might suit us in six or eight weeks to provoke Hitler by taunting him with this difficult choice."
Hitler was not as wise in other matters. He attacked his "ally" Russia on June 22, 1941, even though Germany and Russia had signed a treaty not to declare war on each other.
With this action, the pressure to get the United States involved in the war really accelerated. Roosevelt, on June 24, 1941, told the American people: "Of course we are going to give all the aid that we possibly can to Russia."
And an American program of Lend-Lease began, supplying Russia
enormous quantities of war materials, all on credit.
So with Hitler pre-occupied with the war against Russia and refusing to involve himself with the Americans on the open sea, Roosevelt had to turn his attentions back to Japan for the incident he needed.
The next step was to assist other countries, the English and the Dutch, to embargo oil shipments to Japan in an attempt to force them into an incident that would enable the United States to enter the war.
Japan, as a relatively small island, and with no oil industry to speak of, had to look elsewhere for its oil, and this was the reason for the proposed embargo. It was thought that this action would provoke Japan into an incident.
... President Roosevelt wasn't listening to the charges of Congress-roan Martin Dies, Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. By August of 1941, "The Dies committee had assembled a large amount of evidence which more than confirmed the suspicions which we had entertained on the basis of surface appearances: It was clear that the Japanese were preparing to invade Pearl Harbor and that they were in Possession of vital military information."
Congressman Dies was told not to release the document to the public and the Roosevelt administration did nothing.
(In April, 1964, when Dies told the American public of these revelations he added this comment: "If anyone questions the veracity and accuracy of these statements, I will be glad to furnish him with conclusive proof.")
.. Henry Stimson, Roosevelt's Secretary of War , was to repeat this concern that faced the Roosevelt administration when he testified before one of the Committees investigating Pearl Harbor. There he was quoted as saying: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."

The Unseen Hand by Ralph Epperson