Good evening, tonight we have some topics from The Gods of Eden by William Bramley...

..ONE SIGNIFICANT BY-PRODUCT of the American Revolution was a philosophical reshaping of how people viewed revolution. When Benjamin Franklin was in France to win French military support for the American cause, he engaged in an intensive public relations campaign. He vigorously promulgated the idea of "virtuous revolution"—a concept which had already found increasing favor in the Masonic lodges. The public at that time tended to view violent revolution as a crime against society. Franklin was successful in changing this perception by encouraging people to accept violent revolutions as steps in the progress of mankind. Revolutionaries were no longer to be frowned upon as criminals, he argued, because they were idealists righting for freedom and justice. A new motto was coined: "Revolution against tyranny is the most sacred of duties."1 These bold ideas electrified Paris and helped to win open French support for the American cause, but at a terrible long-term cost to human society. The ideas expressed by Franklin have helped to stimulate endless bloody revolutions ever since.

The American Revolution was followed by many other revolutions and/or the establishment of republican-style governments throughout the western world and South America. The success of the American Revolution had made it easy to rally people to fight. We witness during this era the French Revolution, the creation of the Batavian Republic in the Netherlands (1795-1806), the Helvetic Republic in Switzerland (1798-1805), the Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy (1797-1805), the Ligurian Republic in Genoa (1797-1805), and the Parthenopean Republic in southern Italy. Between 1810 and 1824, the Spanish colonies in South America took up arms and won their political independence. In 1825, the Decembrist revolt broke out in Russia. A second revolution erupted in France in 1830. In that same year, a revolt in Holland brought about the sovereignty of Belgium. A Polish revolution in 1830 and 1831 was successfully stamped out by Russia. In 1848, a major wave of revolutionary activity swept Europe spurred by an international collapse of credit caused in good part by the new inflatable paper money system, bad harvests, and a cholera epidemic.

In nearly all of those revolutions, we continue to see important revolutionary leadership positions held by Freemasons. https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2022/01/part-9-gods-of-edenthe-world.html