Sunday, July 4, 2010
looks like history has made room for us after all
MY gosh it looks like i have the run of this place.
Have had for months now.I rather like that.
It would be nicer if someone would actually read this rubbish but still you never know,
maybe someone does.MAYBE SOMEONE DOES.
I do try to stay on topic
political stuff, topical
stuff progressives would agree with or find interesting.
Perhaps I'm not really that complex or tormented
Perhaps i'M JUST capricious and a bit mad.
but i think history is important, as important as that which is occurring right now
because it does repeat itself , history
it goes in cycles
society lurches forward and then it lurches back
and then 100 years later someone tries to write a book about what it all meant
who were the villains and who were the heros
often people mean well and end up doing very bad things
and as often people only interested in power accidentally drag society kicking and screaming out of the darkness
sometimes people and events are too complicated to simplify
sometimes egomaniacs change the world in both bad and good ways
but they are strong and smart and bold enough at least to try
everybody has a favorite political figure
Che Guevara
a favorite philosopher
mine's descarte
my favorite drunk i think would have to be christopher Hitchens
but the historical figure i am just obsessed over
like some sad lady ga ga fan
is napoleon Bonaparte
you probably think he was just another garden variety dictator
(thats because you've listened to the English)
it not really true
sure he was power mad
but he was also a glorious bastard child of the revolution
if you've ever been curious
heres a bit of info
welcome to my matrix
i THink therefore I AM
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Napoleon- Easily the most fascinating person to have lived since Caesar. And only one of them was, as you mentioned, a "tyrant". It's a shame our public education system spends so little time studying the man. He was, among other things, a master propagandist, and that legacy is the only one we seem to want to acknowledge.
ReplyDeleteNapoleon emancipated Jews from laws which restricted them to ghettos, and he expanded their rights to property, worship, and careers. Despite the anti-semitic reaction to Napoleon's policies from foreign governments and within France, he believed emancipation would benefit France by attracting Jews to the country given the restrictions they faced elsewhere. He stated "I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France, because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country. It takes weakness to chase them out of the country, but it takes strength to assimilate them." He was seen as so favourable to the Jews that the Russian Orthodox Church formally condemned him as "Antichrist and the Enemy of God".
ReplyDeleteThe ascendancy of Napoleon Bonaparte proved to be an important event in European Jewish emancipation from old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited Jews' rights to property, worship, and careers./The French Revolution abolished the different treatment of people according to religion or origin that existed under the monarchy; the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen guaranteed freedom of religion and free exercise of worship, provided that it did not contradict public order. At that time, most other European countries implemented measures restricting the rights of people from minority religions. The conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte had the effect to spread the modernist ideas of revolutionary France with respect to the equality of citizens and the rule of law.
ReplyDeleteThe Napoleonic Code — or Code Napoléon (originally, the Code civil des Français) — is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified. It was drafted rapidly by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on March 21, 1804. Even though the Napoleonic code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil legal system — it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis (Bavaria, 1756), the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussia, 1794) and the West Galician Code, (Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797) — it is considered the first successful codification[citation needed] and strongly influenced the law of many other countries. The Code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major step in establishing the rule of law. Historians regard it as one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world
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