…experience had taught the colonists enough about the nature of human power to conclude from the by no means intolerable abuses of power by a particular king that kingship as such is a form of government fit for slaves.
Arendt considers the American Revolution to have been a success in comparison to the failure of the French Revolution because the colonists put their faith in a system rather than in people. The colonists had learned a vital lesson that the French opponents to monarchy had somehow missed: give someone an inch and they’ll eventually make a great for a mile whether their title is king or something.
The passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution.
The thesis at work here runs counter to the conventional wisdom of the colonists revolting against the British for the sake compassionate concern about the rights of the individual. The author is speaking to broader evidence than merely that even after the revolution slavery continued to exist, though surely that would be evidence enough. After winning independence, the Americans did not sit down to figure out how to make sure everyone was treated equally, got enough to eat and had equitable rights to democratic participation. Instead, they concerned themselves with creating a foundation of law with clear and irrefutable lack of compassion to enormous chunks of society, some of whom were not even extended the right of being considered human. The passion of the Americans was for creating a new government that would hold and not collapse right back into the far less compassionate monarchy.
[Revolutionaries] are the consequences but never the causes of the downfall of political authority.
Arendt offers another subversion of the seemingly obvious here. The general notion would seem to be that revolutions only come about because of revolutionaries who stimulate the insurrection against the prevailing power. The author counters this seeming internal logic with an external rationale that is at least as strong. No matter how fiercely committed to ideals and broad-spanning the support of revolutionary spirit might be, it will never be a match for the weaponry at the disposal of the existing government. As long as that government is stable and powerful enough to control the military, a revolution is doomed to fail. It is only when the prevailing power structure is already starting to fail, be questioned and doubted and exhibit signs of vulnerability that revolutionaries can bring about its downfall and it is the underlying ideological causes of that vulnerability which inspires revolutionary spirit in the first place.
“The word `revolutionary’ can be applied only to revolutions whose aim is freedom.”
The author quotes a French philosopher who like so many started out as a leading player in the French Revolution and wound up becoming one of its victims (though not at the hands of the guillotine). The author engages his quote contextually to make an important distinction. Not every existing authority which is overthrown is necessarily an act of revolution. The difference between a coup which merely replaces one tyrant immediately with another is a completely different political act than the overthrow of a repression regime with one that extends liberty and rights.
