Jacobins

This is why I have a Jacobins tag.

1789, the year the Enlightenment peaked and then went off the rails.

Jacobins is my shorthand for all the Off The Rails bit.  Before, I really like the enlightenment.  Adam Smith, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the seeds of Science, the Declaration, property rights, individual dignity, rule of law, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  After... it's guillotines and communists and suffering and Rock-Roll music on the Teevee.  And it all started (in this fanciful world I made up in my head but has a whiff of truth to it) when the Jacobins yanked on the lever and caused the bottom to fall out of it.

Keep my principles pre 1789 and more Westerly than Continental.  The Wogs start at Calais.   And so does Socialism and sacrifice for the good of the state. 

The duality of the Enlightenment.  One side gives us James Madison and John Locke.  The other side brings us Maximilien Robespierre and eventually Karl Marx.

Embrace one side. Guard yourself and your society against the other.

"Which do I embrace and which do I guard against"

Guard against the side that brings murder by the millions and needless suffering for ten times that.