Appendix 9- The Second Wave

This holiday season, reach for the one butter that never disappoints, Kerrygold. Made with milk from grass fed cows on Irish family farms, it's rich, creamy, and perfect for baking. Whether browning butter for cookies or crafting the flakiest pie crust, Kerrygold's high butter fat content makes all the difference in flavor and texture. Holiday treats will taste extraordinary. Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Appendix nine, the second wave. As we've discussed over the last two appendices, when the first great revolutionary wave recedes, inherent divisions among the revolutionaries emerge. Those who find themselves in charge of the post revolutionary government struggle to maintain cohesion. The disequilibrium of the later stages of the Ancien Regime finds its counterpart in the disequilibrium of the early stages of the revolutionary regime. Things are still extremely fraught and nothing at all is settled. The revolutionaries turned responsible agents of government must improvise on the fly a new set of political arrangements that will hopefully allow equilibrium to return to the society they've seized control of. And this is no easy task because all the chaos balls bouncing around the later stages of the Ancien Regime are still bouncing around in the early stages of the revolutionary regime. Plus, there are almost certainly shooting wars breaking out on multiple fronts. Achieving stability is an incredibly difficult task and occasionally it's impossible. Now, we know that divisions among the revolutionaries can open up on many fronts, religious, geographic, economic, and social class. But one of the most dependable splits is along temperamental and ideological lines. This is a split between moderates and radicals. Radicals cheered on the first revolutionary wave and now want it to advance further in bigger and bolder directions. Moderates cheered on the first revolutionary wave and now want to consolidate a few minimal gains before risking anything more, if indeed they even want to risk anything more. Chances are they are satisfied with the minimum gains and don't want the revolution to advance further at all. It usually happens that as the early stage revolutionary regime coalesces, moderates wind up in key positions of authority. If that government tries to put the brakes on the revolution, they will inevitably be criticized by more strident radical voices. If the conflict between radicals and moderates escalates, then the stage will be set for a second revolutionary wave, a more radical wave that sometimes succeeds and washes out the moderates and other times breaks against the storm wall and is forced to fall back. Before we go on today though, let's get our terminology down. Because words like radical and moderate can take on all sorts of meanings in people's minds. The definition of these words shifts constantly depending on time period, geographic location, and political context. So let's be clear about what we're talking about. Let's start with radicals and radicalism. I often find people misunderstanding one another about who or what should be called radical because we equivocate on the meaning of …