Today in France 231 years ago, after contributing to the executions of a great number of people during the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre himself was overthrown and arrested, one day before he was executed by guillotine.
This was the 9th of Thermidor, the second year, the beginning of the Thermidorian Reaction.
My older child and I discussed again how extremists in the upper echelons of government often go too far, and we specifically brainstormed examples in addition to Robespierre: Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, and Stalin, to name a few. History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but it does rhyme.
Never stop learning,
Erin
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