The French Revolution??

Question: The French Revolution!?!?

how did the french revolution leave unanswered the basic difficulty of reconciling the will of the people with authority of the state!? a little help here!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Their claims of "Liberty and Equality", were,and are mutually opposed goals!. Trying to aspire to both of them at the same time, doomed the entire operation, and insured that the French people got neither!.
Liberty is a process, and Equality is a result!. Liberty has infinite variables, while Equality has a clearly defined end product!. Enforcing laws, by definition, impinges on a person's Liberty, just as having too few laws puts ones Equality at risk!. The morality of laws is based on their ability to balance these two competing interests!. The French failure to reconcile that problem led to the anarchistic descent into State sponsored terror and the rise of Napoleon!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It left it unanswered because the revolution was still ongoing when Napoleon instituted a dictatorship!. Eventually this problem was settled with representative republics (or constitutional monarchies) in which people elect people to represent them to the government!. This idea goes all the way back to Rome!. Democracy is better, because people vote directly upon those things that concern them, but democracy only works on a small scale!.
Reconciling equality with liberty is very possible!. Equality here does not mean uniformity - we will always have geniuses and people who can't change their own diapers!. But these people can have equality in the eyes of the law!. That is, for example, killing a genius or killing a retarded person carries the same penalty!. To put it another way, no one is above the law, including Presidents, which is why they can be impeached (as Bush should be)!.Www@QuestionHome@Com