Monday, October 29, 2007

John Adams on the Iraq Attaq

John Adams once wrote a letter to his friend and rival, Thomas Jefferson, concerning their differences over the French Revolution. Here it is:

"The first time, that you and I differed in Opinion on any material Question; was after your Arrival from Europe; and that point was the french Revolution.

You was well persuaded in your own mind that the Nation would succeed in establishing a free Republican Government: I was as well persuaded, in mine, that a project of such a Government, over five and twenty millions people, when four and twenty millions and five hundred thousands of them could neither write nor read: was as unnatural irrational and impracticable; as it would be over the Elephants Lions Tigers Panthers Wolves and Bears in the Royal Menagerie, at Versailles. Napoleon has lately invented a Word, which perfectly expresses my Opinion at that time and ever since. He calls the Project Ideology. And John Randolph, tho he was 14 years ago, as wild an Enthusiast for Equality and Fraternity, as any of them; appears to be now a regenerated Proselite to Napoleons Opinion and mine, that it was all madness
."
July 13, 1813.

Now what country has roughly 25 million people, where the majority of the population is illiterate and inbred; its absolutist ruler was violently toppled with the goal of creating a flourishing democratic republic, but instead we have ethnic strife, civil war, and massacres on a daily basis?

If John Adams was alive today, his opinion of the Iraq Attaq would be the same, "It is all was Madness."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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