More Historical Parallels

Posted by Lorren on October 30, 2008

My daughter is learning about the early United States, and today we talked about an event that happened across the ocean at around the time that George Washington was being inaugurated as President… The French Revolution.

I’ve heard several people talk about how the police are gearing up to deal with the possibility of rioting on election day. Some people are wondering how peaceful the lines on election day will be. Hopefully, things will go fine. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of unhappy people in this country that don’t like our leaders, and we’re not exactly the God-fearing, love our neighbor type of people that we used to be.

Which is another concern. In 1929, when the stock market crashed and kicked off the Great Depression, people were still generally a God-fearing people. Sure, America had its problems. Atheism was starting to gain a foothold, evolution was beginning to be thought of seriously, and we still had problems with drunkenness, gambling, prostitution, and the like. But there were a lot of people that went to church. Billy Sunday was going around the country preaching tent revivals and people were turning to God. People didn’t kill each other over Playstations, or any sort of toy, for that matter. On a MSN message board that I was reading last night, people were questioning whether we would band together should another Great Depression come upon us, or if the situation would be more like what happened after Hurricane Katrina, with massive rioting and looting from desparate people searching for food.

So when I was reading this passage today, I was amazed. The paragraphs prior to this were talking about how people were having trouble eating in Paris. People were complaining about taxation..

The king was Louis XVI. His grandfather, Louis XV, had been the last king. Louis XV spent more money than he had. How do you think he got more money? He made new taxes for the working people to pay. What do you think he did with the money? He bought things for himself and sent soldiers to fight for land in the New World. How do you think the French people felt?

Louis XVI knew the people had not liked his grandfather. Do you think he tried to be a better king? Someone told him, “The people are unhappy.” Louis XVI said, “I’m sorry. Really. Bring me my horse in the morning. I want to go hunting.”

Heritage Studies 3 p. 25, Bob Jones University Press

Does that sound familiar at all? Hasn’t our government been spending more than it has been making? Are our leaders cutting government spending, or are they proposing to spend more? Are we being taxed more, or less, than we were 100 years ago? Government continues to tax us more, then it adds more programs and adds more taxes. We didn’t even have an income tax in America’s early history, and when it was instituted, it was only a small amount, and then only for the most wealthy. We didn’t have social security taxes or Medicare until the Great Depression. And we all know that the amount of money promised to retirees for Social Security and Medicare will not be covered by the amount of taxes we currently take in… they will either have to cut Social Security or they will have to… you guessed it… raise taxes some more.

And what was congress’s response to our energy problem earlier this year? “Oh, we’re really sorry the American people have such high energy costs, let’s go on a 5 week vacation.” Is this much different than Louis XVI going hunting while all the people complained? I realize that some of the congress wanted to vote on the bill before vacation, but they were shut out of getting the opportunity by Nancy Pelosi and her friends.

People are getting tired of bailout packages being passed when 90% of the country is against it (and the leaders being threatened with martial law if they didn’t comply). They’re tired of nobody doing anything about immigration for years and years. If everyone knew about the Mexican Army invading our country and holding up Border Patrol agents, they’d be mad about that. People are upset because writing letters doesn’t seem to work. Voting out the known corrupt people doesn’t seem to work. Many people aren’t exactly thrilled with the presidential candidates (and haven’t been for the last several elections). People are starting to feel helpless to do anything about it.

If you throw starvation and a depressed economy into the mix… do you think that things are apt to turn out well for us?

The French people did not behave properly. They burned factories. They broke their stuff and threw it at soldiers. They behaved like my toddler having a tantrum. They killed the governor of the Bastille. They killed a lot of people… things were so bad that the year was called the terror. It was not a nice time to live through, and the people were not acting in accordance with the Bible (the Bible says to follow those that God has put in charge of the government).

I don’t want anything like this to happen, but I fear that if things turn far enough south for us, there will be some people without the moral standards to do the right thing, and refrain from hurting people. And I’m afraid that the years of deficit spending and government leaders not listening to their constituents is not going to lead to a good end.