Bastille Day

Just a few years after the American Revolution and just two years after the Constitutional Convention hammered out a document that everyone could more or less sign on to in the United States, the French Revolution got rolling.
The storming of the Bastille, a prison that had long held political prisoners, followed a period of food shortages, increased taxes, and the militarization of Paris.  It was a far cry from the “liberté, égalité, fraternité” that we think of today. There were wild swings in loyalties, those who started it were killed by those who followed, accusations flew, and in the end, Napoleon came to power and they replaced  a king with a dictator.  Not the kind of progress they were hoping for surely.
The biggest lesson learned from this period has to be that big changes are hard to muster.  Edmund Burke said it best in well known letter published after the American Revolution, government must arc towards progress, but not veer to far or too quickly.  In the United States we are headed at least back to the 1970's in terms of environmental protection, the 1950's in terms of social values, and the era of dictators in terms of leadership.