LITTLE ROCK — A modern revolution never seems to end. Look at the French Revolution, which set the pattern. When those observing the 200th anniversary of that revolution gathered, they soon splintered into much the same factions that had emerged at the time of The Revolution itself: not just monarchists and republicans but ideologues from all points on the revolutionary spectrum.
Now those watching the revolution in Egypt wonder whether it will follow the French model or somehow achieve the equipoise-an ordered liberty-that the American revolution did. The Egyptians are about to discover, like the French and Russians before them, that it is easier to have a revolution than hold on to its ideals.
The French took only a few years to reach their Thermidor-the point at which revolutionary frenzy pauses, then begins to pass once moderation or just exhaustion sets in. Danton’s famous audacity yields to the desire for a little peace and stability, and the pendulum of history swings back toward the calmer center. In France, it has been swinging back and forth since 1789.
The Russians, less fortunate, did not reach their Thermidor for 70 years, and by that time the pendulum had become a gigantic scythe, cutting down millions and threatening to tyrannize the entire world in the process. Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make revolutionaries. The unceasing kind.
And what of the American Revolution-why did it stop at a certain time and place with all duelegality and ceremony, and why has it continued steadily, informally, and, with the exception of The Late Unpleasantness (1861-65), peacefully?
How did Americans avoid the deadly cycle of revolution and counter-revolution, destruction and counter-destruction? Why didn’t we fall into the European pattern? Why was this young republic, the precursor of modernity in so many ways, spared so much of its internecine violence?
The stability and moderation of the American republic reflects the stability and moderation of its first president. George Washington was not averse to new ideas-in farming, in soldiering, in governing-but he used them rather than let them use him. Whether he was acting as general or statesman at the time, he entertained ideas, and even turned them into policies, but he treated them as his servants, not his masters.
George Washington was not what passes for a Man of Ideas in modern times, meaning a captive of theory. In the wilderness with Braddock, he had learned early on the dangers of following theory rather than experience. That lesson served him and his country well when he found himself engulfed in many another wilderness-the wilderness of statecraft, of commerce, of politics, and of freedom.
He learned in order to overcome the past, not be enslaved to it. At a time when the French Revolution was making fanatics of both its supporters and opponents, Washington declared America neutral. He put the national interest above national pride-and passions-when he concluded Jay’s hated treaty with the British, despite a national seizure of anglophobia that would last for another half a century or more.
He learned to be forceful when he had to be, as when he crushed the Whiskey Rebellion on the frontier, and made it clear that the still new federal government would indeed collect its taxes-and not be defied. Yet he was lenient when he could afford to be, which was as soon as the rebellion was over. That’s when he pardoned all those who had taken part in it.
He learned the power of sheer persistence-at Valley Forge and in campaign after unlikely campaign against a great empire.
Washington may have performed his greatest service not as commanding general or first president, but in that period of dissolution and uncertainty between the Revolution and the Constitution, when he held no formal title. It was a time when no one’s hand seemed on the tiller, and the ship of state began to drift aimlessly, without direction or ballast.
Patiently, through one consultation after another, directing without commanding, leading without holding any office, he presided over the birth and adoption of what the British statesman Gladstone would call the greatest work of man ever struck off at a given moment in time: The Constitution of the United States.
One of the American instructors of Egyptian military officers studying in this country says that what impressed them most was a visit to Mount Vernon. Of course it would. After a Nasser, after a Mubarak, they were confronted by the example of an acclaimed leader who, having accomplished what he set out to do, simply stepped down, setting an example for his successors.
What would the French have to celebrate 200 years after their revolution-The Terror, the guillotine, Napoleonic absolutism, the alternating monarchies and republics that followed? Which republic are they on now-their fifth? They have to number theirs.
At a time when violent nationalisms and ideologies still dominate the news of the day, and make the future of any revolution a guessing game, George Washington’s continuing if now almost unnoticed presence still stretches over this Republic-like a calm and steadying light.
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Much of today’s column is drawn from his essay on Washington published February 22, 1996.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 02/22/2013