A Skunk by any other Name

Haller on the Pedigree and Early Career of a Central Modern Political Term

The past few years have seen interesting and important debate and discussion over the meaning and significance of what is conventionally called "Liberalism". Those over the age of forty grew up habituated to see all politics in terms of a Manichean duality and struggle between so-called "Liberals" and their opponents, as though a natural and eternal order of things; to give just one example, in Canada the word "Liberal" remains the official name of the flagship party of the political Left. Very recently, though, certain transformations in the polity of every English-speaking country have seen this word, once unselfconsciously uttered and taken for granted every bit as much as the word "cat" or "automobile", problematized and its significance in current affairs cast into doubt. Those formerly and universally known as "Liberals" are now much more likely to be named "Progressives", "activists", or simply, "the Left", both by themselves, and their opponents. As the old civic norms, customs, and gentlemen's agreements that held the two-party system together rapidly fall into desuetude before what appears to be the ascent of a one-party State jealously monopolized by the political Left, Liberalism, it is said, is a spent force, either deforming into or being displaced by something called "Wokeness", "equity", or somesuch, depending on who you ask; and this is either a good or a bad thing, also depending who you ask. Those who think it is a good thing, despising Liberalism as nothing but a system of covert racial norms ("Whiteness") and the pretext under which White male "colonizers" dispossessed and slaughtered Blacks, homosexuals, and other "oppressed" or "marginalized" groups, look forward to a glorious new era of restitution for these alleged injustices ("diversity, equity, inclusion"). Those who think it is a bad thing bemoan the tragic dénouement of former virtues of Tolerance, Freedom of Speech, Civil Society, Impartial Administration, the Rule of Law, and Constitutional Government- all bestowed on us by something they call "Enlightenment", which shone the light of Reason on the human species for the very first time in history, finding, in the founding and the written Constitution of the United States (or, for the British, the Glorious Revolution and the capitulation signed by William of Orange) a finality of self-perfection that could never be surpassed or exceeded, only corrupted and debased to the extent that any further innovation occurred. It is significant that many in this camp of self-styled "classic Liberals" would, twenty or so years ago, have uttered the word "Liberal" only as a most derisive epithet against opponents on the Left, and styled themselves "Conservatives" instead (and sometimes, continue to); we will return to this.

However, long-run history testifies that there is considerably more continuity across the apparent flux and tumult of the Modern experience than the present-oriented partisans of the political Left and Right alike are willing to credit. Liberalism is indeed dying, and will soon be dead, but that is because the civilization that has hitherto supported it has finally begun to buckle and falter under its weight, soon to collapse altogether; the civilization itself will continue to carry the burden of Liberalism on its back until it collapses and dies, and Liberalism consequently dies along with it, like the scorpion of fable that stung the very frog that was carrying it across the river. And if there is to be any hope of avoiding that grim fatality, that suicide pact, it will take a decisive rupture or revolution in consciousness that will, so-to-say, tear the scorpion right off of the frog's back and stomp it to death, along with any other member of its species that may happen to be around, instead of hoping to have the Woke scorpion trade places with another, ostensibly less venomous one ("classical Liberal", "Centrist", or somesuch).

In these respects, and perhaps precisely because our present has more in common with our Modern past than one might think, the following, timely, Haller reading may be thought of as a fortuitous intervention from the past in a debate in the present.

One of the reasons for over-estimating the discontinuity between the "Liberal" past and the supposedly "Woke" or "Progressive" present, no doubt, is the human foible of confounding words and the things and concepts they denote, signifiers and signified, as linguists would have it; the tendency to simply assume that two different words must denote two altogether different and heterogeneous things. But a skunk by any other name would smell as bad, and be as obnoxious. Haller documents how, in the early 19th century, the words, "Liberal" or "Liberalism" (words which, until then, had an entirely different meaning, and were never used outside Spain), first made their appearance in a decades-long succession of brand names- "Radicals", "Revolutionaries", "Republicans", "Philosophers", "Enlighteners", and so on- of a political doctrine and project which, starting from the premise that all humans are born free and equal, and must be restored to their putative original and rightful state of absolute liberty and equality: sought to abolish religion and traditional scholarship, and replace them with novel secular ideology ("reason"); do away with all social superiority and all inequality of wealth, property, power, or even talent, and above all, abolish all those social relations of authority and dependence which, however, are the very stuff of human society; and bring down all existing States, Monarchies and Republics alike, in favour of a new regime in which decision-making power would be monopolized by secular intellectuals in the name of (but by no means for) putatively oppressed peoples. These essential features of the doctrine and the project did not change with the labels used to denote them; the choice of names was but an exercise in political marketing or branding, at all times driven by circumstantial and tactical considerations; to the extent that there was any difference between the various brands, these were but subtleties, variable points of diffraction (as Michel Foucault might say) within a body of theory and practice united by the same core goals and assumptions (in particular, some of these factions and schools were hesitant to take all of the implications of the doctrine to their logical conclusion, others not).      

In this light, the "Progressive" and "Woke" political brands of our present show themselves up as no more different in what is truly essential from the "Liberal" brand than the latter itself was from the various Enlightened or philosophe-branded versions that preceded it. The partisans of Critical Race Theory who declaim against Liberalism as so much toxic "Whiteness" are nonetheless at a loss to tell us just why there is a great moral imperative to level all differences in the distribution of wealth and occupational attainment between the races ("affirmative action") were it not implicitly assumed, as Liberalism does explicitly, that all men are born equal, and ought to be made equal if we find them in any other state; we think ourselves justified in concluding that the words "equity" and "equality", presently vehemently opposed to one another; are but two words for the same thing (the very etymology proves it on its face). New name, same skunk, same fragrance. Likewise, our "Classical Liberals" are at a loss to tell us just why, if sovereign power rightfully belongs to the collective or so-called "people" alone- then why exactly does property, as the font and material substrate of power, not also belong to the collective, what good reason is there not to nationalize it accordingly? We think it clear that Liberalism and Socialism have more in common than this faction likes to think- something evidenced by how, through most of the 20th century, "Liberalism" and "Socialism" were effectively synonymous terms in political parlance. As to the word, "Progressive": this one was adopted by the erstwhile self-styled Liberal supporters of the Democratic Party in the USA some twenty-odd years ago when Right-wing broadcast-media demagogues such as Rush Limbaugh succeeded in making an epithet and public laughing-stock of the word, "Liberal", and for that very reason.

Finally, with special respect to the abovementioned "classical Liberals" and "centrists" who invidiously contrast an idyllic order of Liberal tolerance, civility, freedom of speech and inquiry, social harmony, impartial administration, and all that, supposed to have existed well into living memory, to the present, putatively "illiberal" reign of censorship, suppression of dissent, unrelenting dogmatism, blatant political favouritism and the weaponization of justice and State power against political opponents, all soon to culminate in one-party rule- I shall let Haller intervene from the past and remind them that Liberalism was always radically intolerant, always relentlessly censorious of opposing points of view, always opposed to academic freedom and real scholarship, always ready and willing to deny opponents their civic rights and unleash the full repressive power of the State against them wherever the opportunity presented itself, always strove towards an oligarchical one-party State exclusively controlled by the Liberals themselves, and in short, did everything our present-day classical Liberals decry in their Woke arch-enemies; and they did it all, not in spite of "Enlightenment", but in its very name, which was originally their coinage.

I'll add by way of qualification that our classical Liberals don't entirely deceive themselves in their memories of respectful and civil public debate, Constitutionally-guaranteed rights to freedom of conscience and expression that were generally respected, relatively impartial administrative and judicial process and even news media, free and fair elections, and different things like that. (I myself am old enough to remember it all). What they're remembering, however, isn't Liberalism in its pure and incorrupt state, but- far from it!- an imperfect or hybrid Liberalism yet too adulterated with, and hampered by, some remnants of religion, morality, patriarchy, and the pre-Liberal or natural social order more generally for the full complement of its inherently despotic, destructive, and totalitarian tendencies to have taken full flower. It is rather precisely in the present that, these vestigial checks and counterbalances having withered into impotence, Liberalism has cast off all the fetters that hitherto held it back, sloughed off all of its accidents and inessential extraneous matter, and emerged in shining pristine purity for the first time in Anglophone history. There the Liberal tree stands finally ready to reach full maturity and bear the fatal fruits of political and religious persecution, civil war, destruction or inversion of all authentically human social relations and all religious and filial piety, and abolition of meaningful liberty by the iron hand of a new and terrifying despotism- all of which were already genetically encoded in the seed, as its developmental destiny. Whether we call it Jacobinism, Liberalism, CRT, or something else makes no difference. A skunk by any other name, etc.   

(Post Script: If "Liberalism" is nothing more than one trade-name among a host of others, why continue to call it that, why not coin, for scholarly purposes, some neologism that could conceptually cover the thing-in-itself and all its variants? No doubt, it is to the analytical advantage of wildlife biologists and people like that to refer to skunks, following a rigorous scientific taxonomy known to every specialist, as Mephitidae. But in my experience, neologisms in the social sciences rarely accomplish much more than making the specialists flatter themselves as much smarter than they actually are at best, and introducing needless and counter-productive confusion even amongst the ranks of the specialists themselves, to say nothing of the educated but unspecialized laymen with whom they must communicate if they are to have any influence. Most everybody has an idea of what the familiar term, "Liberalism" means- one that is more or less accurate, and to the extent inaccurate, still shares enough content with the rigorously accurate signification to make public discussion and education possible, and without anybody having to take a grad seminar in anything. In any case, you have to call it something, and if there's a better word for the thing, I've yet to hear it; "Leftism" (a term I often use myself) is a bit vague and impoverished in terms of concrete content; and I personally find it both most economical and most productive to conceive of the likes of Communism, Fascism, etc. as variants of Liberalism, as opposed to treating all of them as so many hypostases of a nebulous "Leftism".)

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(Adapted from: "Des Noms des Partis Politiques, pour servir à l'intelligence des Journaux et autres Ecrits Modernes", in Karl-Ludwig von Haller, Mélanges de Droit Public et de Haute Politique, Paris: Auguste Vaton, 1839, trans. and ed. mine).  

We have often thought that one of the greatest gifts to make to good literature would be a small Liberal dictionary, to be carried in one's pocket at all times. It would replace a lot of good books and enable us to refute a lot of bad ones. This language or rather this Liberal jargon is in fact wholly peculiar: it resembles French expressions or locutions, but taking them in their ordinary sense, one comprehends nothing and sometimes even laughs at these apparent absurdities. The Liberals people accuse of ignorance aren't as dumb as they think and could often rightly make fun of us in turn. The reproach of bad faith isn't always any more well-founded; for the Liberals have taken enough pains to decipher their language for us, and it's not their fault if we don't want to understand it. We may perhaps follow up by giving some fragments of such a dictionary, supported by the testimonies of the most famous writers in philosophy. We would begin, for example, with those grand words of reason, liberty, equality, humanity, the dignity of Man, humankind or the human race, civilization, tyranny, despotism, privilege, fanaticism, superstition, etc., etc. For now, we will limit ourselves to explicating all these names of parties that for forty to fifty years have filled books and magazines, and that one hears repeated at all times in conversation. The youth coming up are astounded by their multiplicity; they take them as so many diverse factions succeeding each other one after another; in their secret pride, they believe them perhaps equally removed from the truth; at the least they become confused, uncertain, unmoored, and don't know which side to turn to. Would that we be allowed to simplify their ideas, to guide them through the apparent maze, and above all help them to better understand the journals.   

A famous author has said it in few words: "Towards the end of the last century, there arose a sect teaching that men are born and remain equal and free"; and we have seen this sublime proposition enshrined at positive law in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, at the head of our highest constitutional acts. Actually, it already contained a great absurdity, given that every infant, even the son of a King, is in no way born the equal of his parents, that he is on the contrary born into extreme dependence; willingly or by force, he is obliged to obey, and only little by little arrives at liberty, to the extent of the growth of his means, to the extent that he is better able to provide for his own needs. But wouldn't it have been necessary to correct this error of nature? Wouldn't it have been much nicer to be free in everything and the equal of everybody? Sons and disciples of an older sect, that, under pretext of freedom of intellect, revolted against all educational authority, against all superior intelligence, and often even warred against the powers of this world: the partisans of this doctrine took its implications further than their predecessors. They affected to abolish all superior authority in the temporal order as in the spiritual order, given that according to them it was usurpation or tyranny. There was no longer to be obedience, nor dependence on Earth; with the result that each cobbler, even each suckling infant, was to be a pontiff and a sovereign, a magus and a King, or, in other words, that he was to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and have need of nobody to instruct, feed, or protect him. The sun, which until then shone for everybody, was to enlighten only free men obeying their own intellect, and often not even them.

The world as it exists and perhaps always will exist, being unfortunately contrary to these principles, it was deemed necessary to change it, bring down all highnesses, destroy or weaken all power, in order to restore all men to the level of equality and supposedly primordial liberty. From there, war against God, in which neither physical nor moral laws were recognized any longer; war against all superiors whatsoever, war against altar and throne, war against Church and State; for the one is the enemy of reason and the other the enemy of liberty. And don't believe that it was limited to wanting to overthrow these authorities of the first rank. The secondary powers were no more to be spared- for aren't they petty tyrants worse than the highest, since they are more numerous? And in any case, in cutting down the trunk, the branches fall by themselves. Hence, no more authority, no more tradition, even in the other sciences; each would invent all, each would know all, and better than his predecessors. No more pontiffs, no more Kings, no more princes, no more bishops, no more nobles; no more masters, no more servants, no more artisans, no more workers, no more corporations, those monstrous conjurations that make even the weak strong; no more teachers, no more pupils; husbands and fathers were barely still recognized; at most they were left with only their physical being, duties without rights, or a sort of executive power; in short this whole sublime science consisted only in dispersing, in isolating, in destroying, in making men, if not free, at least equal in misery, or liberated from all help; and for fifty years, hardly anything else has been done. If all has not perished, if we have saved some debris of society, we owe it only to physical impossibility, to the sometimes all-too palpable absurdity, and to the fortuitous inconsistency of men, even in evil.   

Don't go object to me that these sectarians, in order to remain faithful to their principles, would have had to begin by destroying themselves, they that claimed to possess spiritual power of the highest degree, that called themselves the prophets and tutors of humankind; who regarded it as their pupil, and who emphatically announced that their wisdom has put the Universe at their feet. Once a fact is verified, confirmed, avowed by its very authors, one cannot deny its existence, by saying that it's unreasonable, or that one doesn't understand it. In all times there has been contradiction in the conduct of men, and moreover it existed here only in appearance. Authors of the rule, the new sages were naturally exempted from it, or rather they could interpret it according to their intentions; if they fought all outside authority, never did they suppose that they themselves should never form one; and nothing was more just and more necessary than to also confer temporal sovereign power upon them, in order to realize their doctrines, propagate them, and above all conserve them against their enemies. No more tell me, that these philosophers or these Liberals, as they are called today, all the while unchaining themselves from all dependence, all service, nevertheless sought out and coveted all public offices (emplois), all ministries; that they pretended to be the sole servants of sovereigns,  and that they even screamed persecution when one of theirs was dismissed from his service, that is to say, set free. This would strike you as a new inconsistency, or rather you believe them justified by this conduct; but you're still in error. The new sages are neither as egotistical, nor as ambitious, as they are made out to be, and you would never change the creed of one by making him more powerful. If they consent to exercise power and to occupy public office, they don't depend, but command; they don't obey, but rule, and therefore aren't unfaithful to their principles; they don't serve the master that appoints them, that pays them, but only themselves and their own dogma; consequently they always stay free and independent [compare the supposedly novel phenomenon of the "deep State" in North America today, particularly in light of the experiences of President Trump -trans.]. For them, the power of others, and even that of sovereigns, has nothing respectable in itself and nobody owes it any recognition; it is nothing but an obstacle to be overcome, or a means to employ. Hence, you'll see them attacking and defending it by turns, according to whether it is an adversary or an instrument, but nonetheless, even in the latter case, something to be cast off sooner or later, since it never reaches the heights of principles, requiring compromises, at least in form; finally, since it could repent of its complacence and itself seek to become free once again.    

Our readers will forgive us this little introduction aiming to characterize the sense of the age. Let's move along to the various names these new prophets have taken for almost a century, and to those they have given to their adversaries: we shall see that they are almost all synonymous, and perfectly well-chosen.

An honourable and flattering title being the premier condition, or the most sure means of imposing upon the world and increasing the number of one's partisans, the prophets of the new reason and the new liberty first took the name of philosophers, that is to say friends of wisdom; for a sage of their fashion need in no way think like others, need not limit himself to better or more precisely apprehending what others ignore or only have confused ideas about. His wisdom consists in having opinions contrary to all received belief, in contradicting common sense and the universal testimony of men. Formerly, it is true, such wisdom would have been called madness; but wasn't it obvious that the whole world was full of idiots and had plunged into darkness? Under the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, they were also known by the name of encyclopedists, since they were the chief collaborators or contributors to that great repertoire [i.e. the Encyclopédie -trans.], dedicated to disseminating their doctrine into all minds, and to causing all previous learning to be forgotten or neglected. But in order to diversify the nomenclature, making use of the definition and the thing defined by turns, they also called themselves, here strong minds, that is to say, believing in no authority and knowing everything by themselves; there, enlightened men, since before them everything was dark; elsewhere, friends of reason and humanity, for, in their parlance, reason is by no means that light of the mind that helps us to discover and apprehend the nature of things; it is rather the absence of all faith; and humanity in no way signified the sentiment of the human heart that leads us to empathize with the troubles of our fellows, to give them relief, and finally to obey the laws of our nature; but it signified the new dignity of Man, the human royalty, by virtue of which he need recognize no superior. Also it was in the name of humanity and for the triumph of humanity that people slaughtered, that they massacred, and that they pillaged their fellows, above all their fathers, lords, and benefactors; that they refused them all consolation, that they froze up against all pity: even tears and remorse were a crime against humanity. Sometimes, finally, they designated themselves simply by the title of free men, not free to do all that is licit or possible, according to the means at their disposal, but set free from all authority, every rule, except for their own; recognizing no power, no higher law.   

These philosophers soon had disciples and comrades in Germany who imitated their example, and these two schools resembled one another so much, that one could scarcely perceive the nuances, the particular shades and so-to-say the taste of the terroir that was to distinguish them. The Germans also called themselves the enlightened (aufgeklaert) or enlighteners (aufklaerer); they united themselves into an organized group, and those who were members became the Illuminati, resplendent with the light they had received. It must be noted, in passing, that these enlightened men hated all true sciences to the core; they had an aversion to the learned and the erudite; they targeted them with great disdain and scorn, since these inconvenient scholars, with their severe logic and their positive knowledge, were the most fearsome adversaries of the new reason. History, in particular, formally gave them the lie everywhere, and that's why they wanted to have it disappear from our schools, because it filled, so they said, the mind with prejudice, and teaches us nothing but absurdities. Having managed in France, through circumstances well-known enough, to seize the sovereignty and the power of the Most Christian King; continuing to make use of his name and his authority as a provisional and useful tool, or as a type of executive power, to which philosophy was to give orders; other times having need of the  support of the greatest number, and seeking to organize France, or rather their party, after the principles of the social Contract; these philosophers, these free men, these friends of reason and humanity, changed their name yet again, and took that of populists, of patriots, of democrats, so as to make it sound like they were defenders of the people against a small number of lackeys of tyranny, notwithstanding that no sect on Earth had as much scorn for the people, which they called a stupid rabble [compare how the Presidential candidate for the self-styled Democratic Party in 2016 publicly reviled the people as a "basket of deplorables" -trans.], and that one of their foremost principles was to recognize no fatherland in particular. These names retained a bit of currency for two or three years, that is to say, from 1789 to 1792, and during this time, one witnessed the words monarchy and democracy scream in terror of running into each another.  

The obvious necessity or utility dictated that the brothers unite in clubs and associations, in order to mutually fortify each other in their belief, to give themselves guarantees of loyalty, and above all to prepare their projects and their means. These associations were chiefly organized in Paris, from which affiliated clubs in the provinces were directed, following the example of Masonic lodges, and from the locations of their assemblies or their sessions came the coinages of Jacobins, Feuillans, and Cordeliers, associations which had quite a few subtle differences between them, but of which the first wasted no time absorbing the other two, because it was the mother and the root, and because there the doctrines were professed unmasked, uncut, with no retreat in the face of any implication; finally, because all of the crimes, all of the atrocities that ravaged France and Europe came out of this cave of sophists. This club, moreover, wasn't at all French, but rather European; the worst subjects of all Europe were enthusiastically welcomed and received the fraternal embrace there; it was, so to speak, an ecumenical council of the visible kingdom of Hell.     

In the beginning, the Jacobins called themselves only friends of the constitution; but soon afterwards, this constitution not seeming philosophical enough for them, or coming to inconvenience themselves, they were no more than friends of liberty and equality; for in essence, as today, it was only this that was desired, and the constitution was to serve only to amuse the idiots and serve as a pasture for their disputes, in order to prevent them from touching upon the sanctuary. The public, always more brief in its phrases, didn't stop calling them Jacobins, and that's why this coinage has outlived every other; it is today almost universally adopted in Europe, and rightly recognized as a synonym of philosophists and sophists, of the impious or rebels by principle, of Revolutionaries, Liberals, etc.; for, as much as these gentlemen sometimes protested against this imputation, and claimed not to be Jacobins, we answer back that they had been either the masters, the disciples, or the satellites; and that the Jacobins, in the strict and rigorous sense of the term, weren't just the strongest and most consistent minds of their brotherhood.      

In 1792, after a struggle of three years, the Jacobins or new philosophers, as you like, carried, as is well-known, a complete victory. They overturned the throne of the Most Christian King, sent its last occupant to the scaffold, guilty, as Saint-Just said, of the crime of ruling, and swore the same sentence upon all Kings on Earth, past, present, and future, great and small. Hence all of a sudden the name Republicans was seen to appear, and many good people, in Europe, imagined that this word had changed or tamed the tiger; for, have we not seen certain more or less free corporations, live in the peace with the rest of the world and maintain order tolerably enough at home? But this Republic, of an entirely new sort, had the peculiar characteristic, that the whole world was to become one, that everybody was to command, and nobody obey, at least in theory; while in practice it existed only in the league of sophists, from then on freed from all constraint; they alone were its members; the so-called public thing, that is to say everything that the King and private individuals had possessed in France, belonged only to them. All the other men who, out of politeness, or rather out of derision, were called citizens, were nothing but subjects, fit to pillage, to vex, to kill; or, if they were left with some honour, it was that of obeying, of marching, of dying for the Republic, made up of those who called themselves the tutors of the human race. But the new sages, although assisted by all the lights of the times, couldn't agree on their political machine; each affected to obey only his own reason, each wanted to make his individual will the general will. This clash of opinions produced, in fact, some inconveniences; it resulted in, for example, various bloody factions that, even as they assassinated their shared enemies, slaughtered one another for three years. They were sometimes called by the name of their chief leaders, sometimes the places where they had the most partisans, sometimes of certain subtleties of opinion; and thence came the titles of Brissotins, Girondins, Demaratists, Robespierrists, Federalists; even though all of these factions constantly proclaimed reason, liberty, equality, the dignity of Man and the sovereignty of the people. Finally, their names fell to the wayside as well to make new place for the generic word Republican, which lasted, for better or worse, until 1799.  

At this very time, a victorious soldier, taking advantage of the lassitude of all the parties, of their mutual fears, and of the decrepitude of the Republic itself, put a stop to all this disorder for a moment. Accustomed not to obeying the will of the multitude, but dictating his own to it, he kept liberty or independence only for himself, and tolerated equality only beneath him. He associated himself not with co-citizens, but servants, auxiliaries, even subjects, and the fuss this word, hazarded in a treaty with a foreign power, on an assembly itself subjugated and servile, produced is still remembered. Bonaparte dispelled this first and last tempest with glosses that softened the sense of the word; but the essence remained, and, astonishing thing, the soldier came to establish his empire with much more ease than the philosophers that hadn't succeeded at decreeing or realizing their constitutions and their national sovereignty.     

Hence all these party names disappeared for a moment. It was no longer a question of reason, nor humanity, nor liberty and equality, nor Jacobins or Republicans; one heard talk only of Bonapartists and anti-Bonapartists, of partisans or enemies of a new sovereign who also aspired to become universal. Europe was no longer divided by principles and doctrines; but for a single man, or against a single man. The apparition of this comet came to disrupt the plans of the philosophers, who no longer knew which side to take. On the one hand, this new master was the man of the Revolution; it had raised him, he was, so to speak, its heir; it was his chief support. He didn't entirely reject the spirit of the 18th century, to which he owed, in fact, all his fortune; thus, no more could the men of this same century abandon him. His will of iron, his wars, even his conquests could serve as instruments of disorder, destruction, levelling, and universal discontent, that were to overcome the obstacles and subsequently facilitate the introduction of new philosophical or representative constitutions; an era where the sages of the century would be regarded as the saviours of the world. But, on the other hand, this man was ungrateful towards his mother; he spoke of his person, and exacted obedience, not for the nation or for the sect, but for himself; he decided the sovereign, and even allied himself with Kings. In general, he liked or rather feared the great more than the small, inasmuch as he could like anything; he no longer persecuted the clergy, and consequently declared himself the enemy of reason; he created a nobility, fiefs, fee tails, orders of chivalry; even abroad he passably handled secondary social relations, provided that they didn't get in the way of his own personal ambition; finally, deep down in his soul he neither liked liberty nor equality, nor even the philosophers, which he sometimes called Jansenists and sometimes ideologues. Hence, some among them developed suspicions against him, and no longer knew if they were to regard him as their friend or their enemy; they never forgave him for having reduced them to silence or obedience, still less for having uttered the words, perhaps misplaced, but profound enough, that the throne is just a piece of wood, and that it is to its occupant that one must become attached. However, these petty infidelities towards the spirit of the times didn't cause him to fall from his throne; many people thought, on the contrary, that, absent faults of another sort, he could have kept it; at the very least it is certain that they procured him more partisans than he would have had without them.  But this man, puffed-up (enivré) by his success, and who already no longer had any superior on Earth, no longer wanted to recognize any in the sky; he affected to master the elements or the nature of things, and broke himself against it. Providence, which had fashioned men for obedience, seemed to want to prove to us, by this example, that sovereigns must themselves obey, certainly not their inferiors, but, like other men, a superior. One must concur, moreover, that his yoke wasn't very light, although at all times more bearable than that of philosophy and its directorate. Nations didn't find it in the order of nature, that a sole man should rule, on the one hand, from Paris to Saint Petersburg or Moscow, on the other to Lisbon and Cadiz, and that he demanded obedience without giving anything in return; it struck them as highly incommodious to serve two masters at once, to keep up two armies, the one national, the other foreign; to pay taxes to their own sovereign, and tributes to his much less accommodating enemy; finally, of always giving, without ever being able to get and keep. Hence, Europe cried out anew for liberty, and, at the first opportune moment, rallied around their chiefs, to re-conquer, not a new good, but that which had been lost. Kings wanted to be masters at home, and each private individual aspired to at least be that in his house, in his business, and in his licit acts. Liberty of peoples was the name given to deliverance from the foreign yoke, emancipation from a tyrannical and oppressive will, and above all from the janissaries from whom its execution was procured.        

But what an opportune moment to revive or renew the credibility of the philosophical doctrine that had slept for ten to twelve years, and that, by favour of circumstances, would take flight once again! Hence the sect didn't neglect to seize it; ever-adept at taking advantage of the wind to steer its own boat, and reaping what others had sown, it advanced the notion that the liberty or independence of peoples, words that everybody had on their lips, consisted not just in deliverance from the foreign yoke, nor the return of the old and legitimate order of things, but in emancipation from all authority, all natural dependence, even on their princes and their benefactors; in short, in the sovereignty of the nation, or rather the sect itself. According to them, it was neither the Kings nor their loyal armies who had carried the victory and overthrown Bonaparte; this success was due only to certain writers and a league of sophists; it was they who won liberty, therefore it ought to belong to them alone. Hence, in the same way that in Spain the efforts of the nation on behalf of its King resulted only in handing sovereignty over to a club, likewise in France and Germany all the triumphs of the allied armies against Bonaparte were to redound to the profit of the Revolution alone.     

No doubt it was difficult to do away with Kings all at once, closely-knit amongst themselves, strong with the recognition of peoples, and become more powerful through victory; their houses could be entered by stealth through constitutions, that they would be talked into enacting by themselves, or accepting them from philosophers, under pretext of the recognition that these Kings owed to their peoples. This method was, one must concur, admirably well-chosen and truly infallible. For every constitution, in the modern sense of the word, makes the people, or those who claim to be its organs, the sovereign, and the King, a subject or butler; thus, there is in fact no more King, and royalty is abolished, save for some phrases, from then on devoid of meaning, and that are preserved in order to confound morons. Moreover, in order to introduce and reinforce these constitutions, men who are in favour of them are needed, and since Revolutionaries alone want them, they alone would necessarily be brought to sovereign power. Now, as soon as one enjoys this supreme power, nothing is easier than dismissing the provisional servant decisively, should he turn around and remember his former dignity, and not wish to consent to complete suicide. The philosophical Republic having failed in France, it had to be established in Germany, a project that was masked under the word union or unity, and the German philosophers undertook to fill the role of the great nation: they already appointed the high priests and general captains. During that time, the heads of the sect, that is to say the friends of liberty and equality, ordered their disciples to take the name of Liberals; and this word, which at first had only been used in Spain, suddenly resounded from one end of Europe to the other. Formerly, Liberal was what one called a generous man who gave liberally from his own goods, and asked for nothing in return, other than love and recognition. Cato, in fact, had already complained about the abuse of this term along with many others, seeing as that the partisans of Catalina called liberality the appropriation of the goods of others, and valiance the audacity of crimes. (Bona aliena largiri liberalitas, malarum rerum audacia fortitudo vocatur). Today, it's worse still, and one calls liberal whoever takes or even destroys the goods of others; those whose generosity consists of killing the chicken that lays the eggs, or cutting down the tree that bears fruits. We know that the liberals of our times give very little and demand a lot; at the very least they want all peoples to be their tributaries, their bodies through conscription, their goods through taxes, their souls and their minds through servile belief and obedience. It was therefore clear, that the title of liberal could not be taken in the older acceptation of the term, but rather in a strict and literal sense, that signifies: "inclined to independence, partisan of ideals of liberty and equality". The German brothers also felt that way, or rather their very language forced them into better faith. The word freygebig not having the same ambiguity over there as that of Liberal, they translated it as freysinnig, which means, "thinking freely, dreaming of liberty, having free sentiments", and left the rest to be all-too-readily guessed.     

Sovereigns and nations having for a moment forgotten their rivalries and united in heart in the last war against Bonaparte, the Liberals saw fit to further change up names, and to commandeer national titles in order to designate those who would bring down all private superiority, dissolve all social relations, and melt the different classes of people down into one uniform mass, under a sovereignty called national, but represented or exclusively exercised by the Liberals. Hence, in Germany, the authors, accomplices, and adherents of this system, alone were called Germans or Teutons, and one spoke of Germanism or Teutonism, which was neither Austrian, Prussian, Bavarian, or Saxon, but something altogether new, or rather the opposite of all those. Hence again, we know that in France, although already unified and compacted, the Liberals alone are French, and that, in their language, the very word France has become synonymous with philosophism or Revolution. To cite just one proof among thousands, is it not generally said that missionaries did more harm to France than the allied armies? We have not, in fact, heard it said, that they reduced or sacked the territory, killed the populace, pillaged properties, exacted taxes and requisitions; but it could very well be that they did some wrongs, and perhaps more wrongs than the armies, to the cause of Revolution or the new liberty; that they tore away whole provinces from the sect, shook its throne, reduced the number of its subjects; and if this gang alone is France, the Liberals are right to say she was done a lot of harm. The same stratagem is employed in other countries; for, in the Liberal kingdom too, the satellites follow the grand planet and the vassals their master; equality is disguised under the names of unity or uniformity, one obeys, all the while screaming that obedience is a crime against humanity, and power rules in spite of the system that seeks to banish it from Earth. It is thus that, in modern Switzerland, ever since Masonic lodges were augmented and Teutonized, the Liberals or the partisans of the defunct one and indivisible Republic [i.e. Helvetic Republic -trans.] alone are called Swiss. Whosoever still loves his particular fatherland, whosoever carries the name of an old confederated State, in short, would leave to each his own, respect private rights and property, and doesn't declaim against the bogeymen of hierarchy  and privilege, no longer counts as Swiss, even though he and his ancestors had been Swiss for five centuries. Thus it is yet again that all of Europe's adventurers, running around in the provinces of the Ottoman empire to support the cause, not of Christianity, but of philosophy, will be nothing but Greeks, perhaps even Christians, and I bet that in the wake of a certain bull, the Carbonari of Italy will call themselves Italians, certain that this name will impose upon the Holy Father, and that he won't dare excommunicate them. Their brothers and friends in England, who, according to a famous Liberal newspaper, count 80,000 secret-society members (hétéristes) among them, obliged to borrow from the usages and the circumstances of their country, where there has been much talk about a type of Parliamentary reform, have with a certain good faith taken the title of radicals (what the Germans designate by durchgreifend), as though to announce to everybody that they won't content themselves with some small concessions to the spirit of the times, with a simulacrum of a constitution or of representation, such as it exists in England, and which continues to maintain the foundations of the edifice; but that they want to enact a radical reform, that is to say the complete triumph of liberty and equality, of the sovereignty of the people, or rather their own, over the largest base. In England as well, the dignity of Man won't be solidly established until there is neither a King, nor gentlemen, nor a Brahmin caste (for so they call even the Protestant bishops sitting in the House of Lords), nor the great landed nobility, those minions of tyranny and oligarchy; all highnesses must be laid low before a type of Freemasonry that will be the sole educational authority and the sole power on Earth. Finally, since it is expedient to frequently change style, clothing and colour in order to win over and seduce the multitude, we furthermore see the Liberals calling themselves sometimes Constitutionalists, it being well-understood that that the constitution will be made by and for them alone, that they alone will be its interpreters, that it will have regard only for certain abstract ground principles, and that every conclusion will be drawn from them; at other times independents, a word borrowed from the English revolutionaries of the 17th c., and which signifies not independent through one's wealth, leisure, or the small number of one's needs, but recognizing no dependence, no authority superior to their own; sometimes doctrinaires or principlers (principiers), that is to say, depositories of the doctrine of the age, not bothering themselves about whether or not the principles are workable; guardians of the new light, a philosophical priesthood dedicated to preserving the sacred fire and to lighting up or burning down the world; finally, carbonari or charcoalmen as well; an epithet well-chosen to designate the salutary and regenerative work cutting down and burning cedar trees and reeds, in order to reduce them to the equal condition of coals, themselves destined to start new fires.

Just as it is expedient to commandeer honourable titles in order to inflate the number of one's partisans, so it is useful to give odious names to one's adversaries, in order to make them desert their cause. Hence the philosophers didn't neglect to do so, and the epithets they used to this effect, never neglected to indicate the contrary, either of their doctrine, or their pretensions. And so, those who waged war against all authorities, against all Divine and human laws, being philosophers par excellence, strong minds, enlightened men, friends of reason and humanity: it naturally followed that those who preserved some faith, who believed, not in philosophy, but in ancient wisdom, in the evidence of facts and universal testimony; that all those who remained faithful to their duties, who recognized a God in Heaven and a King or a master of whatever sort on Earth, could not and should not be anything other than men of prejudice, imbeciles, morons, the superstitious, hypocrites, fanatics, stooges of despotism, etc.; for isn't prejudice the opposite of reason, despotism that of liberty, and is not darkness opposed to light? These imbeciles nonetheless had some talent, knew just how to use a pen, when it came to fighting the new prophets with the weapons of science and sarcasm; these were obscurantists, persecutors, madmen, finally, knights of the dimmer (l'éteignoir), united to snuff out the light of the age. Voltaire, that model of taste, urbanity, and philosophical politeness, had an even more fecund genius in this genre. As a gesture of his tolerance and philanthropy, he gave no answer to his adversaries other than hurling the titles of [there follows a string of idiosyncratic French insults that cannot be translated into English and need not be -trans.], etc. at them. Do you show some doubts about universal equality? Do you claim that nature created men with a diversity of means, consequently forming between them an inequality of fortune and condition, in order that they could mutually help one another: you were privileged, and everybody knows what kind of magical influence this word has exerted and continues to exert upon the world. Are you a little more known, wealthier, or more powerful than another? That was an exception, an exemption, an infraction of the law. Those attached to an illustrious name, of opulence and high office, were usurpers; for it is clear that they had stolen their fame from unknowns, their fortunes from the poor, and that the weak had foolishly despoiled themselves of their own power in vesting it in a select few individuals. But every pastor that guided his faithful, every master that had servants, every artisan who commanded his workers, every citizen of a town, every member of a corporation that not everybody was part of, was likewise privileged, or belonged to the privileged classes. When, in the era of Revolution, the philosophists took the title, democrats, their adversaries were naturally called aristocrats, and this word became absolutely synonymous with privileged; since the new sages also claimed that the citizens or public officials of a Republic, or of any corporation whatsoever, owed their power and their rights to a privilege stolen from their inferiors. There was not, in fact, any question of establishing a Republic in France just yet, at most this project was only admitted to in secret; but the title of Royalist still enjoying some favour, given the provisional existence of the King, every superior whatsoever, by his relation to his inferiors, every man attached to his God and his King, finally every enemy of absolute equality, even of the lowest social class, was and still is nothing other than an aristocrat or privileged. [compare how today the poorest Whites are deemed beneficiaries of "White privilege", while even Blacks who reject the Woke agenda are unironically titled "White supremacists" -trans.] The democrats having in 1792 come to ridding themselves of the King, as the last obstacle to equality, to establishing their philosophical Republic, and to call themselves Republicans: the epithet of aristocrat, thereafter unnecessary, was put aside, and they were no longer designated by anything but their true name, Royalists, an honourable title in itself and that contains all, but become perilous by the circumstances, since it invariably led to the scaffold, or at least prison. Moreover, for these new Republicans, alone enjoying the title of patriots, every Royalist could only be an enemy of the people and of his country, a foreign agent [compare: "Russian asset" -trans.], and millions of Frenchmen, who throughout the centuries never knew anything but their beloved France, who naively thought that the King was also French, and that without him they themselves would not exist, saw themselves, to their great surprise, suddenly transformed into Englishmen or Austrians, into employees of Pitt and Cobourg; for they had at least as much in common with them as disliking Revolution, and preferring the sovereignty of the King to a Jacobin club.

However, the word Royalist continued to maintain a certain favour in France, and the philosophical committee ruled that it wasn't in its interest to make use of this honourable name for their political enemies too often. These Royalists moreover made themselves respected in taking up arms in Brittany, for the cause of God and the King, that is to say, for eternal justice and the power that maintains it on Earth; they made legitimate war against those who made it against them. Hence, every enemy of the Revolution, even in the periphery of the Kingdom or abroad, was a  Vendéean, a Chouan, a maker of civil war, a disrupter of the public peace [compare "domestic extremist", "insurrectionist", etc. ad nauseum -trans.], that is to say a man who disturbed the peace of Revolutionaries in order to give it to honest men, a friend of order who made war against disorder. When it was a matter of exporting the Revolution abroad, propagating the new doctrine of equality, and establishing the philosophical church under the name of constitutions: along the way small Republics that were commonly called, albeit improperly, sometimes aristocracies, sometimes democracies, were encountered: hence prudence dictated changing language once again, and the word oligarchy, which hadn't been uttered until 1797, was brought into use. By virtue of this term, every citizen or subject of a Republic, attached to the natural order of his country, observing the faith and laws of his forefathers, was an oligarch; even the most populistic Republics were no longer anything but oligarchies, and one read, in official reports, that 5,000 oligarchs had descended from the Valais mountains to oppose the directorial army that came to introduce the regime of liberty.

Finally, this fashion passed too, Bonaparte appeared, and all this language ceased; but one was hard-pressed to find another more suitable to the circumstances. On the one hand, philosophers or Republicans were no longer wanted, on the other the Royalists weren't liked, since they were supposed to be too favourable towards the royal House of Bourbon; at best this title had a double sense which didn't inspire complete confidence. The word Bonapartist indicated only the servile cult of one single man, and that of Imperialist didn't sound too good to French ears, being that it is true that, for this unnatural regime, one couldn't even find a word adequate to its essence, in a language as rich and as flexible. But just as soon as the philosophical confraternity could take a few a breaths, went and attempted a new experiment in Spain, and the title of Liberal was substituted for that of Revolutionary or Republican: it called its antagonists serviles, an excellent word by its marvellous ambiguity, and which in its literal sense designates all those who serve or obey where duty commands it, those who recognize a legitimate master, and who lend him their assistance with zeal and fidelity.

Certain German scribblers (folliculaires), disenheartened to see their nation, naturally loyal, remain such in spite of the great number of its sophists, even tried to accredit the abject and vilifying expression of hündlen or hündler, that is to say imitating dogs, acting in the manner of dogs, because the dog is a faithful animal. This crude term did not, in fact, have a lot of success; but, seeking to impose it on people of high society or some superficial learning, these same dogs, that is to say the enemies of the Liberals, were called feudalists; and this not without good reason, for, as the word feudalism comes from fidelity, as all vassals are faithful, and fidelity presupposes a master to whom it is owed in return for his benefits: one understands why this word feudalism became intolerable to Liberals, and that they sought to render it odious from the beginning of the Revolution.        

Finally, the King of France having been restored to his throne, it would have been too absurd or too malapropos to continue to make an insult of the name of Royalist. The Liberals even sought to pass themselves off as such [as the Whig ur-Liberals over in England had from the Restoration onward -trans.] in the interest of better serving, not royalty, but the spirit of the age, that is to say the system of revolution. Consequently, in order to render their enemies odious, they invented the term of ultra-Royalists, [compare "far-Right" or "extremist" -trans.] or simply ultras, that is to say those who crossed the line drawn by the reason of the philosophers, who took Royalism to excess (even though there was assuredly no excess either in their triumph, nor even in their wishes); finally, they were accused of being more Royalist than the King, although every King on Earth should be honoured to have subjects more jealous to preserve his rights and his authority than he himself; although all times have seen and honoured ministers and faithful servants, who looked after the legitimate interests of their masters with more zeal and thoughtfulness than these masters themselves did; and, if our own thoughts must be stated, we believe to a certain point, that the natural order and the well-being of peoples won't return to Earth, save when this mutual sacrifice becomes the general rule; when there is no longer any struggle between princes and their subjects, other than that of surpassing each other in love and reciprocal benefits; when Kings are more Populist than peoples, and peoples more Royalist than Kings (well-understood, though, that sophists aren't taken as the people, and that they would be fought out of  solicitude for the people itself). In any case, the word ultra suddenly resounded from one end of Europe to the other; and from Petersburg to Lisbon, Berlin to Naples, every man who loved order and justice, who respected his God and his King, who believed that the time had come to reverse course on his errors, and do away with a little of the work of the Revolution, was an Ultra; no other reasons were needed to refute it. Let's thus conclude that all these diverse epithets were synonymous, and indicate nothing other than the enemies of the Revolution, or, better yet, of universal equality; finally, the friends of justice and a natural social order, founded on benefits or reciprocal service.