Contrasting Ideals and Ends in the American and French Revolutions

This book describes momentous events in the American and French Revolutions. The American revolutionaries were nationalist patriots, who wanted independence from Great Britain and to create a new nation based on the principles of classical liberalism and Natural Rights theory. Their goal was the attainment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, inherent in the God-given or Nature-derived rights of free men. They did not seek to overturn the basic institutions of society as eventually the French revolutionists did—when they destroyed churches, desecrated tombs, and even renamed the months of the year, creating a new revolutionary calendar. The French revolutionists adopted the revolutionary slogan Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, but they did not grasp the fact that the leveling of society was incompatible with liberty. And regarding fraternity, they did not mean the brotherhood of all men because the nobility and common citizens who did not hold the purest aims of Jacobin ideology were exterminated.

Miguel A. Faria, Jr, MD, was born in Cuba. His parents were revolutionary members of the urban underground that fought against Fulgencio Batista. He escaped with his father from communist Cuba at age 13 and came to the United States after a three-month odyssey through several Caribbean islands. He grew up and was educated in Florida and South Carolina, where he completed his undergraduate studies, graduating magna cum laude in 1973. Dr Faria attended the Medical University of South Carolina (USA), receiving the Merck's Manual Award for scholastic achievement and earning his MD in 1977. He performed his neurosurgical residency at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), completing his training in 1983. He practiced neurosurgery in Macon, Georgia (USA). Presently, Dr Faria is Associate Editor-in-Chief of neuropsychiatry; history of medicine; and socioeconomics, politics, and world affairs for Surgical Neurology International (SNI), a peer-reviewed international journal for neurosurgeons and neuroscientists. He has written over 200 professional medical or public health articles and published several books.