George Bernard Shaw said, "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."  How true; for today, the United States is reliving a 21st century French Revolution of sorts.

Like the French Revolution, the Obama Revolution began with noble intentions and was kindled by comparable root causes—including mismanaged wars, decreasing capacity to meet domestic obligations, mounting national debt, and class warfare.

In 1789, the rise of Enlightenment ideals, popularized and promulgated by the likes of Rousseau, Voltaire and others, helped to foment a sense of unrest and growing desire for upheaval.  In the mid-2000's, a comparable feeling of dissatisfaction and want of change permeated America.

Like 1789, aspirations for change in the mid-2000's were initially driven by deep discontent with the performance of those in power, then later catalyzed by emerging charismatic voices for transformation.

In 2006 the American electorate "stormed the Bastille" and planted a flag, expressing a profound disdain for how government was operating.  It wanted something better.  In fact, it insisted on something better—someone equipped to coalesce the disparate interests of a political class spun out of control and unable to address the needs of a country facing increasingly intractable problems.
 
The King, Bush 43, was neutered, and his court (Republican congress) was exiled. In swept Barack Obama—Robespierre in an Armani suit.

Robespierre, as explained in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, was a "bright young theorist but out of his depth in the matter of experience."  Further describing Robespierre, the encyclopedia continued, "the Committee of Public Safety gave him power, which he hoped to use for the establishment of his favourite theories, and for the same purpose he acquiesced in and even heightened the horrors of the Reign of Terror.  It is here that the fatal mistake of allowing a theorist to have power appeared."

So, although the French Revolution removed a failing monarchy, it replaced it with a radical democratic republic, and an even more poisonous climate, highlighted by the Reign of Terror where rival political factions executed enemies with impunity.  Today, public opinion and the ballot box have replaced the guillotine as the method of choice for purging unwanted politicians.  On Tuesday, the metaphorical guillotine dropped on twelve months of tone deaf, hubristic one-party rule.  The people spoke loudly—damning the failed promise of bipartisanship, the drastic lurch to the left, and the Reign of Economic Terror.

The French Revolution played out over ten years and led to several additional decades of turmoil as the country struggled to find its identity and settle on an appropriate form of government.

Things did not end well for Robespierre.  The idealistic and once promising leader attempted suicide and was subsequently executed.  He contributed to and was unable to contain the wild excesses of a movement that morphed into an unruly and unrestrained mob.

Although many in his party are doomed, there is still time for President Obama to avoid a 21st century version of Robespierre's fate, repudiation at the ballot box. 

Will he be able to set aside his largely rejected ideology and do the peoples' business, or will he stubbornly and self-destructively continue to pursue his own "theories?"

Marx said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

Let's hope not.