The end of revolution.

Here's an interesting remark by Bernard-Henri Lévy about the end of revolution (as opposed to the end of history a la Francis Fukuyama).

The fascination with the political equivalent sweeping one's arm across the table and sending china, crystal goblets, and dinner crashing to the floor has always puzzled the Colonel. To us it's been a manifestation of the ultimate "dog in the manger" mindset. "If you, Society, won't recognize my brilliance and innate loveableness, then, by God, you will pay the price of chaos and the arbitrary rule of the disaffected and the rejected.

When did the dream of revolution die? "With Cambodia," Mr. Lévy answers. This was an event "much more important than the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the Hegel of modern times will write this history,he will say that the real crucial event was Cambodia." Why? "Because till Cambodia all the revolutionaries in the world believed that revolution had failed because it didn't go far enough, because it wasn't radical enough." And then Cambodia happened--"the first revolution in history to be really radical. . . . And what did we discover, all of us? Instead of paradise, revolution gives absolute hell."

So would Mr. Lévy say, improving on Francis Fukuyama, that Cambodia, and not the fall of the Berlin Wall, was "the end of history"? "No, not history. The end of revolution. The end of the desirability of revolution."

"Mr. Lévy is certainly correct that the Cambodian experience under the bestial Khmer Rouge exceeded even the misery of the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions. However, any one of them -- not to mention the French Revolution -- was by itself enough to persuade anyone with half a mind and a measure of integrity that gigantic social and political upheavals have misery and death as their only sure result.

French Kiss. Bernard-Henri Lévy hates the Iraq war, but loves America." By Tunku Varadarajan, 1/21/06.