Sunday, October 21, 2012

That crap platitude ("Show me a young Conservative ... Show me an old Liberal ...") endures because the French Revolution is still being fought. As it ever was.

454 W 23rd St New York, NY 10011—2157


Guizot


It’ll come as no surprise that this phrase was coined by one of the guys who hammered the liberalization of thought won during the Revolution into a tool to serve the restored Bourbon king in 1830’s France. Nobody remembers Guizot now, but there’s something almost literally science-fictionish about the fact that his little piece of spin has continued not only to tick, but to actually infect with its bullshit people separated from his target by two hundred years.
For contemptuous contemporary purposes, the Conservative and Liberal labels are fashionable. The phrase was originally formulated:
N’être pas républicain à vingt ans est preuve d’un manque de cœur ; l’être après trente ans est preuve d’un manque de tête.  
It's as much nonsense today as it was then.


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