Comment by tsimionescu
6 days ago
Agree that it's unlikely, but while knives in the back still led to centuries of imperialism, the guillotine cleanly ended absolutist monarchy in France once, and then some ships and exile ended the second time, and it generally stayed dead afterwards.
Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
It's iterative republic development. Release a republic, test it in the field, make improvements. Makes sense to me.
:D I don't know why, but something about this made me giggle.
Nazis again? We did Nazis remember? End of the Third Republic, all of that? Everybody agreed Nazis were a bad idea, why the fuck are there more Nazis?
> Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
Their last king wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England, and was one of three (or four) kings (Louis XVIII, Charles X, (arguably Henry V), and Louis Phillippe, who reigned between the First Empire (and consequently also after the First Republic) and the Second Republic (and consequently also before the Second Empire.)
Their last monarch was even later, and also wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England. The series of governments after the last monarch includes only the Third through Fifth Republics (and, depending on how you look at it, the Vichy regime between the Third and Fourth Republics.)
And IIRC there wasn't much substantive difference between the Third and Fourth Republic; the latter was basically a restoration of the former after France was freed from German occupation, not a change in governing philosophy by the French people, so you could argue that there were as few as two substantively different French systems of government after the last monarch was deposed.
French model was largely a failure in every way. This is the 5th iteration of their republic now, and it's gripped by internal issues that can quickly approach those US is dealing with.
The important difference that you mentioned in your comment as well is: the French problems lie in the realm of possibilities, while the US problems are in the present. So the comparison doesn't really hold. Maybe it's also helping that the French iterated 5 times, a concept we are all taught in agile 101.
Based on this thread I'm starting to believe that any static governmental system is a failure and it's the iterations that bring about prosperity.
You also have to consider that the guillotine ended up killing more revolutionaries than nobles though.