Revolutions Worlds Apart: Why America Chose Liberty and France Chose Terror: Both the American and French Revolutions promised “power to the people.” One delivered it; the other descended into bloodshed and chaos. Why? (Lawrence W. Reed, July 1, 2026, Daily Economy)
[I]n the decades leading up to 1776, the American colonies were steeped in the moral and religious currents of the Great Awakening, a Christian revival that emphasized self-examination, personal responsibility, and restraint.
Protestant values of self-improvement through hard work, private enterprise, and thrift helped shape early American development. In France, by contrast, the Revolution elevated men who sought power for the purpose of remaking society itself. That self-indulgent impulse to reshape others at any cost did not take root in early America as it did in France. The United States did not empower men with the apparatus of concentrated, legalized force and then expect them to behave modestly with it. Early America did not entertain the notion that society could be perfected through coercion.
Blessedly, after Hume, the Anglosphere could never be seduced by the false god, Reason.