If you think of classic conservative thinkers, the name that often comes first to mind is Edmund Burke. Among Burke’s works, his Reflections On The Revolution In France is the clearest statement of why he believed that conserving and reforming the existing “constitution” (in the British sense of the word, encompassing more than formal laws and institutions) was usually better than overthrowing it. Burke directed much of his animus against the leaders of the French Revolution, whom he considered to be, to state it politely, not up to the job. Here’s one of his many pungent criticisms of them:
To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government, that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind. This I do not find in those who take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient as they appear. I rather believe it. It would put them below the common level of human understanding. But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators,—the instruments, not the guides of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors,—until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper and moderate on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines and establishing powers that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.
In revolutions like the one in France, Burke argued, the worst rise to the top. And by “worst,” Burke did not mean just comically incompetent. The execution of the king and queen was, to Burke, the logical conclusion of a political philosophy for which no norm or institution was sacred:
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every visto, you see nothing but the gallows.
While the Freedom Caucus may never erect a guillotine on the floor of the House of Representatives, it is very likely that, after the embarrassing and (from the standpoint of doing the business of Congress) unproductive fight over Kevin McCarthy’s election to Speaker, the House of Representatives is likely to get more dysfunctional, and just plain more awful, in the months to come. That’s because, in the fashion of Burke, we can see, once the bomb-throwers get disproportionate power, where things are headed. While you might disagree with Burke’s analysis of the French Revolution, it is true that revolutions often follow predictable paths towards more extreme, more militant, and more destructive destinations.
You can quibble over the definition of “revolution,” and scholars of the subject often do. For example, was the Napoleonic Empire a revolutionary outcome, in any real sense, or just the return of monarchy dressed in different clothing? It’s unremarkable to say, however, that anyone deserving of the title of “revolutionary” is not interested in merely reforming the body politic, but chopping down, root and branch, all the institutions, norms, customs, understandings, and laws that offend them. Reform is not enough. Patience with incremental change is not enough. Revolution now is the only acceptable course of action. (Though interestingly, revolutionaries often say that they are returning society to some previous, better state, before the corruption of the status quo.)
Not all revolutionaries need to be true believers. In fact, there are always opportunists who see revolution as a path to self-aggrandizement. You don’t need to look into the souls of the Daniel Ortegas, Ayman al-Zawahiris, or Robert Mugabes of the revolutionary world to see the possible, probable, or inevitable outcomes of what they unleash.
By this standard, the MAGA faction in Congress has revolutionary ambitions. The status quo must go. Existing rules and norms of how the legislature operates are useful only if they distract and paralyze the people who still believe in them. And if the rules of the game are not worth even respecting, so too are the other players of the game, including both those branded as enemies, and those insufficiently zealous in the war with those enemies.
All of which is a way of describing the way in which many revolutions evolve predictably to the point where the MAGAnistas are now. Over time, the most militant, unscrupulous, outrageous, and zealous revolutionaries shoulder aside everyone else. McCarthy is just another Kerensky or Banisadr, someone useful until the revolutionary seizure of power. Other, more moderate factions, which in this case means everyone from traditional Republicans to even many cultural conservatives, are just as temporarily useful, but on the list to be abandoned. Coalitions with these factions traditionally collapse after the revolution starts, as happened in Russia, France, Iran, and other countries where the most militant eventually emerged on top. The Jacobins are always ready to sacrifice the Dantonists, Girondists, and everyone else at the first opportunity. Eventually, they often turn on each other, especially when there are clashing interests among the opportunists and the zealots, or the zealots battle over the correct orthodoxy or revolutionary programme.
This is the trajectory (or, to use a fancier word, “etiology”) if many revolutions. Following this logic, the begrudging willingness to elect McCarthy speaker was just a slight detour for the bomb-throwers in the Freedom Caucus. The Congressional Jacobins will continue to try to consolidate power, in the form of tribunals investigating the “weaponization of law enforcement,” over-representation on the powerful Rules Committee, the eventual debt ceiling vote, and other acts legislative terrorism, in the words of one “conservative” (whatever that word means now) Republican legislator. The fact that there isn’t much of a post-revolutionary program — what do you actually hope to build on the rubble of the old order? — is less important than ending an ancien regime that cannot be tolerated.
In the short term, there does not seem to be an impregnable wall that might stop the militants from driving the House in this direction. While not all revolutions follow this path (the American War of Independence turned out pretty darn well, for example), once a revolution lets the Jacobins increasingly steer the vehicle of governance, history doesn’t have a happy conclusion. Eventually, people may grow tired enough of the incompetent, nasty, performative, and destructive acts of the Robespierres to overthrow them. The endgame might happen quickly and decisively, as it happened in the case of the actual Robespierre, or it might take a very long time, as it did in the USSR, and might be starting to happen today in Iran. But there will be a lot of damage done first. Or, as Burke put it with 18th century-style eloquence,
[B]efore its final settlement, it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, “through great varieties of untried being,” and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.
