The monarch who began the American Revolution was George III. The cause: taxes after a successful war. Britain had won the Seven Years’ War in 1763, but was deeply in debt as a result. This gave them a pretext to tax the American colonists--without representation in Parliament. The colonists justly protested this act of usurping God-given liberties and begged the British to cease. After years of unanswered and slighted petitions, lawful armed interposition was required on Lexington Green.
Louis XVI and Taxes
The monarch who began the French Revolution was Louis XVI. The cause: taxes. The reason is a little different than the American War for Independence, but one reason was the debt on France because of winning the Bourbon War, which includes the American Revolution and other theaters of war (the French finances were also in trouble after the Seven Years’ War). The other reason was the excessive spending of the French court, especially blamed on Queen Marie-Antoinette. The French hated the Austrians, having fought them for 200 years, and Marie-Antoinette was not only an Austrian, but the daughter of the late Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa. Her spending and nationality inflamed the French against her until at last they revolted against the high taxes and stormed the Bastille.
The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will. (Proverbs 21:1, KJV)
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Sort of a long comment here, bear with me...
So the king goes to war for the sake of his own pride. Of course, he appeals to the people's patriotism to defend himself because in the statist imperialist mind the pride of the nation and pride of the sovereign are one and the same, because the sovereign is the state and the state is the nation.
Isn't this what most unjust wars are about? Saving the pride of the nation rather than defending the people?
This is the Statist mindset: The state is the nation. The state is not an institution of the nation for the good of the nation, but rather the nation itself.
Service to such a state is not patriotism but idolatry. Of course, those whose understanding of patriotism is rooted in flimsy emotion and ungrounded sentimentalism, rather than an objective standard, which might best be described as the fear of God, usually have no scruples about kowtowing to the state as long as they can keep flyin' Old Glory and playin' country on their stereo while driving down the road in an old Chevy, and maybe have their "In God We Trust" bumper sticker. (Never mind that we really trust the state to give us healthcare, Social "security" (whatever that means), clean teeth, good education, homes, cars, good feelings, clean food, clean water, and everything else under the sun, all while we rent everything we own from them by way of property tax. Never mind that we murder millions of our own children. Never mind that we send all of our children whom we don't murder before escaping the womb to statist indoctrination centers to be educated in godlessness of the most dark and despicable sort. All while exporting our great fervor of godless democracy to every nation on earth with an almost messianic air.
Hey, it's Christian America!
For a nation like twenty-first century America to call itself a Christian nation is to take God's name in vain. We WERE. God forbid we should call ourselves Christian now. That would be...umm...highly irreverent, to say the least.
Trading principle for empty, worthless, unfounded sentiment leads to the absolute destruction of a society. (Examples? War Against the States, 1861-1865.)
I'm not saying that our sentiments and emotions should not be patriotic. (Personally, I have a really hard time being patriotic about this centralized United Empire of American Provinces whose union was cemented with the blood of the men of the last bastion of Reformed Western Christendom on earth. Whatever patriotic sentiment I have for America is for old America and the Confederate States.) I'm saying that they should be rooted in the fear of God, not in idolatry.
On a different note, I have to say if there's one thing really, really worthy of being despised about European imperialist politics, aside from the sheer idolatry and foppery of the whole system, it's this thing of politicizing marriages. Pugh!!
Buaidh no Bas,
Andrew Romanowitz
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