Learning Not to Love Revolution; G. Friedman

While this is a very satisfying view of things, it should not be accepted too quickly. This is not because the American model is not superior to other models but, rather, because the world, and particularly those rising up against Communist tyrannies, have not yet learned one of the funda mental teachings of the American Revolution: Don't enjoy revolutions too much. They have not learned to expect only the bare necessities from politics and to seek the more sublime joys of life elsewhere. Eastern Europeans still expect great things from revolution. Coming together in rebellion is seen as a great moment. They see their revolution GeorgeFriedman,a professorofpoliticalscienceat Dickin son College, is the author of The Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School (CornellUniversityPress, 1981), The Coming War With Japan (St. Martin'sPress,1991),as wellas numerousarticleson Marxistthought.Thisessaywasreprint ed with the permissionof the Institutefor Philosophyand PublicPolicy, Universityof Maryland.

as paving the way to a generally and radically improved human condition. Such expectations place them at odds with the modesty of the Amer ican Revolution. In their great hopes for more than a mere "more perfect union," the crowds of Berlin and Prague still share much with their oppressors and less than they should with us. They understand revolution very differently from our founders; it follows that the sorts of regimes they willfound willbe very different from our own and, I think, terribly inferior. WhenRevolutionsAre Young There is a certain ineffable sweetness about revolutions when they are very young. In the beginning, when they strike out against tyranny, they are poems to decency and community, promises of radical simplification. They are odes to joy more than exercises in political theory or action. Consider the words of Schiller immortal ized by Beethoven: Joy, bright spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium, Drunk with fire we walk in Thy celestial holiness.