The makers of the American Revolution had been quite content to work with man as he is, shaped by traditional kinship, local, and religious institutions. For the Jacobins, however, nothing would do but the remaking of man through the power of the state. Hence, the abolition, commencing in 1790, of the ancient estates, the monarchy, the aristocracy, the communes and provinces, the patriarchal family, the guild, the school and university, and any other structures which, by their long existence, might interfere with the state’s work of remaking human consciousness.
ATTRIBUTION:
Robert Nisbet (b. 1913), U.S. historian, educator. “Authoritarianism,” Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary, Harvard University Press (1982).
