Reflections On The Revolution In America
Reflections On The Revolution In America
Sometimes it takes an outsider to see clearly what's happening in a country. In 1790, the Irish statesman Edmund Burke wrote a pamphlet titled "Reflections on the Revolution in France", in which he criticized what was happening at the time. Today another Irishman, Philip Pilkington, offers his assessment of a revolution in another country--America.
It's not as obvious as the French Revolution was, and today's Irish observer isn't critical of it, but his perspective is a fascinating one. I've shared his thread below. Before we get to it, a brief market note.
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Now on to Philip Pilkington's insightful thread.
America Is In The Midst Of A Revolution Now
2/ Let’s start with @Harvard. It is the keystone on the entire US elite class. The American system is a “credential aristocracy”. Harvard is the top of the credentialising pyramid. Without Harvard the rest of the system - populated with Harvard grads - starts to fail. pic.twitter.com/YUEhJj2IPY
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
4/ The Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive attacks on Harvard are undermining the credibility of the system. It is not dissimilar to when a King - say, Henry VIII - starts to attack the Church. pic.twitter.com/RhnfyHJiMQ
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
6/ It is quite typical for revolutionaries who overthrow political systems to be produced by the system. Robespierre, for example, went through the Ancien Regime’s credentialising system with support from King Louis XVI’s state. pic.twitter.com/rDUQP1BTy1
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
8/ So why can’t most people see that the situation in America is revolutionary? Firstly, because politically we have come to associate revolutions with the political left. pic.twitter.com/AHxoxMDcgS
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
10/ The second reason we cannot recognise the nascent revolution is because we think revolutions must have a new vision of society - communism or Jacobinism or whatever - but again the reality is just one of elite cycling. pic.twitter.com/SPiT3zOiFq
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
12/ Judging political outcomes of revolutions in terms of success, failure or even morality is pointless. Revolutions destroy. Their aim is to focus energy to destroy the institutions that were too rigid to integrate desire for change and which thereby provoked the revolution. pic.twitter.com/1E1Wz4Dmou
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
14/ Likewise when the revolutionary forces inevitably lead to chaotic outcomes, anyone saying “I told you so” is just being a bore. The revolution happened because the socio-political forces necessitated it. The elite had a chance to address the causes. They failed. End of story. pic.twitter.com/Z9MxrhA0GY
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
15/ It is too late for the revolutionary moment in America to be contained - probably a decade or so too late. Smart people will accept the revolutionary forces for what they are. Dinosaurs will dig in and get steamrolled. pic.twitter.com/XAQKARHHCV
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025
Update: A Revolutionary Elaborates
Vice President JD Vance posted this on X on Saturday evening:
There is an extraordinary "reproducibility crisis" in the sciences, particularly in biology, where most published papers fail to replicate.
Most universities have massive bureaucracies that inhibit the translation of basic research into commercial adoption.
The voting patterns of university professors are so one-sided that they look like the election results of North Korea.
And on top of all of this, many universities explicitly engage in racial discrimination (mostly against whites and asians) that violates the civil rights laws of this country.
Our universities could see the policies of the Trump administration as a necessary corrective to these problems, change their policies, and work with the administration to reform.
Or, they could yell "fascism" at basic democratic accountability and drift further into irrelevance.