Making sense of this crazy world

I’m still back in the world of books and clever people. And this week its Jean-Jaques Rousseau, the man who saw democracy as a contract. And a thinker that still has a big influence on our world today.

With the French Revolution, I really have to make another diversion and consider the influence of the philosophes. Not only did they have an influence on the revolution but they have a profound influence on our world today. So, I’m back in the world of books and clever people. And I begin with the work of one Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu.

We’ve looked at the English Revolution in the seventeenth and the American Revolution that rid itself forever of the English monarchy but replaced it with an oligarchy of the wealthy. So now I’m going to turn our attention to the French Revolution, the one that gave us Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Well, we’ll see about that.

This episode wraps up our look at the American constitution, so-called American democracy by looking at the ratification process and making a final assessment of just what had been achieved.

This episode will focus squarely on the American Constitution, a constitution that Americans at least, still seem to think is fit for purpose. I say this because there have only been 27 amendments with the first ten making up the Bill of Rights, so really, they were always part of the constitution, and the 21st amendment was repealing the 18th amendment (prohibition) so, in effect, there have only been 15 amendments.

I left things last week with the American colonies at war with Britain. But also, at war with themselves. And this is going to continue. And this episode will look at the America that was created out of the Revolution and I’m going to suggest that what was in fact created was an oligarchy.

In this episode, I’m turning my attention squarely on the American Revolution, the revolution against British rule, because it led to an independent American state and to the Constitution that largely still operates today. And I'm going to suggest that for the people of America, it was a decidedly limited revolution.

This week I’m going to look at someone who, along with Karl Marx, was perhaps the most important thinker in shaping our world today. He was a pamphleteer, a journalist, a propagandist, a polemicist, and something of a philosopher. His name is Thomas Paine and he’s important because he had a remarkable influence on both the American and French revolutions.

Having looked at the English Revolution, the civil war and its aftermath, this week I’m going to look at the political thinking that came in its aftermath. It shows the depth at which people were thinking about the business of governing in the seventeenth century and, in line with the purpose of this humble podcast, its had a profound impact on our world today. So, it's going to worth our time.

In a nutshell, England had been governed for eleven years, from 1629 to 1640, without a Parliament; for another eleven years, from 1649 to 1660, it would be governed without a monarchy. England, and by default, Britain had sorted out a democratic future for itself slap bang in the middle of the seventeenth century. Only to regret what it had done and bring the monarchy back. But of course, there was more to it than that, and that’s what we’re about to have a look at.