Égalité, Fraternitè, Libertè were the main ideas of the French revolution. The idea of the revolution I want to focus on is Libertè. Libertè, or liberty, was the idea of being free of oppression from the clergy and government. The way the French governmental system was planned out was there were three estates. Clergy were priests and the high royalty and were the first estate, Government were the dukes of certain areas and were the second estate and the rest of the population were the third. The third estate was always doing the work like farming, weaving, and other basic amenities all for the first and second estates.
The third was also taxed a lot, due to the debt the French were in from the wars they fought. The third estate was given very little in the way of rights. They were also most of the French population but were poorer from the taxing and hungrier than everyone else from the sudden loss of food which went to the first and second estate. The upper estates were also limiting what was put in the papers and news, so the population only knew what the upper estates wanted them to know. The third estate did not agree with the heavy tax burden due to the wars and spending of the upper estates. Add on to that, the limiting of the press. So, they began a revolution by marching on Versie and storming the bastille to show that France could fall for a new unoppressed state controlled by everyone in an equal democratic republic.
Libertè falls into my life as I feel I do not have the same rights as adults or people older than me. Adults have the right to vote which could change the rest of my life depending on what happens. We also don’t have the right to choose if I go to school or not, that’s dictated by the government. There are also certain liberties that only adults can do for pleasure, like drink, gamble, and buy cigarettes.
These liberties are age restricted to protect young kids and are examples of things that are only acceptable for adults and are enforced by law. Adults have a lot of rights that younger people will not have for a while but could affect our life’s more than theirs. If I had the right to vote, I feel like my voice would be heard and appreciated. I could have an important role in the presidential election or in the mid-terms today by voting on issues such as raising taxes, electing a Governor, and voting on education funding. The voting laws are here for protection, but in my opinion the election age should be 14.
My personal philosophy on revolutions are that revolutions are good in a major oppression or ignorance to a situation that could be harmful. I find bad revolutions to usually revert to a dictatorship or monarch without change to what was happening and it was just a grab for power. In my opinion, Revolutions should not be fought in wars but in words. Just like women’s rights movements, black lives matter, and the high school walk outs for the recent school shootings, Parkland had a major impact to this. All of these mentioned revolutions effect the entire population, and have shown improvements through peaceful protest.
