A Revolution—If You Can Keep It

On the eve of America's bicentennial, the American Enterprise Institute published Irving Kristol's lecture, "The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution." Kristol noted that at the time "the idea and very word, 'revolution,' are in good repute today; the American Revolution is not." Yet the American Revolution was "the only truly successful revolution" because it was able to "subordinate" human "passions to serious and nuanced thinking about fundamental problems of political philosophy." In other words, the revolution yielded, by its unique design, to a stable and flourishing republic rather than carry on the bloody work of eternal radicalism. Dyed-in-the-wool revolutionaries blanch at the idea that a well-structured republic could ever carry out the work of a once-vital revolt against the ruling order.

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