Table of Contents
	Chapter I	Voltaire and the Encyclopedists
	Chapter II	The Hegelians
	Chapter III	Heaven on Earth
	Chapter IV	Empire of the Czars
	Chapter V	Llano Estacado
	Chapter VI	Dawn of the New Age
	Chapter VII	Man of Steel
	Chapter VIII	Wolves are Closing In
	Chapter IX	Roman à clef
	Chapter X	Shifting Alliances
	Chapter XI	Cold War
	Chapter XII	Lost Empire
	Chapter XIII	Apre le Deluge
	Chapter XIV	Paper Centerfolds
		Postscript

Voltaire and the Encyclopedists

The memories of Utopias were located in the minds of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, crystallized in the mind of Voltaire, materialized in the mind of Karl Marx, and realized by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Ideals of the Enlightenment were Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. Its apostle, primus inter pares, was Voltaire.

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Voltaire disliked monarchical theocracies with their prisons of the body and the orthodox religions with their prisons of the mind and had the courage to stand up against the powerful secular rulers and vindictive orthodox ideologues. His motto was

'Courage to doubt, to investigate, and to understand'

which gained him numerous imprisonments and enemies. Voltaire is best known for his sharp, facetious sentences, such as

'Common sense is not so common,'

perspicuity embedded in sentences such as

'What more beautiful rule of conduct then Confucius'
 has ever been given to humankind since the world began?'

and far-sighted insights into the grim reality of the nuclear age, such as that

When he was queried about the origins of religion, Voltaire answered that

Among the Voltaire's maxims are:

Voltaire disliked monarchical theocracies with their prisons of the body and the orthodox religions with their prisons of the mind and had the courage to stand up against the powerful secular rulers and vindictive orthodox ideologues.

Land of Desolation

Voltaire's opus magnum is Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764), a compendium of his main ideas. Its 'Religion' entry is excerpted here as follows:
 
Last night I was absorbed in contemplation when one of those genii who fill the intermundane spaces came down to me and transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones. I asked
 
“Where have you brought me?"

"To the land of desolation,"
 
he answered. "Come and see for yourself, but first, you must weep." He pointed the piles of bones and said
 
These are the twenty-three thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred thousand.
 
These are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each other for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they had to be divided.
 
Here, said the spirit, are the
 
twelve million of North American Indians killed in their country because they had not been baptized.
 
"Since you wish to instruct me," I said, “tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties." Yes," he said. “The Muslims.
 
As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war. 
 

Enlightenment and the French Revolution

In France, Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764) is associated with the story of Chevalier de La Barre. Jean-Francois de La Barre was born in 1745, orphaned at an early age and raised by his aunt, the abbess of Willancourt. On August 9, 1765, the wooden crucifix on the Pont-Neuf was defaced. Priests harangued parishioners to reveal all that they could know of this sacrilege. One parishioner recalled that Jean-Francois de La Barre did not greet the religious procession at the time of the last Corpus Christi. While searching his room at the abbey of Willancourt, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was found. Jean-Francois de La Barre was tortured and on July 1, 1766 decapitated. His body was thrown to the flames, together with the seized Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique. He was 19 years old.

John Adams (1797-1801)

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)

Enlightenment and the American Republic

In the history of the United States, up to now, there were only two father-son presidential successions: the Adams and the Bush dynasties, both philo-Semitic, pro-British, and anti-French. In a letter criticizing Voltaire, Adams wrote:
 
'How is it possible Voltaire should represent the Hebrews in such a contemptible light? They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation ancient or modern. I believe that once restored to an independent government, the Jews would wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities of their character and become liberal Unitarian Christians for their Jeh-vah is our Jeh-vah and their G-d of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is our G-d.'
 
Like President Bush I, President Adams I was a single-term President. Like the Bush's I son George W. Bush who lost the popular vote and was not elected but nominated by the Supreme Court, Adams' son John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote and was nominated by the House of Representatives. During his administration, President Adams I rhetoric provoked a virulent frenzy of the anti-Gallicism. Congress appropriated large sums of money for the Army and the Navy, and passed the Alien and Sedition acts, bearing resemblance to the PATRIOT legislation passed during the Bush II administration 200 years later.

The United States Navy initiated hostilities against the French shipping, but before the naval encounters escalated into a war, Adams lost election to Thomas Jefferson, the former American legate to the French government, who had no inclination to continue Adams' warmongering and, together with James Madison (1809-1817) maintained our neutrality during the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars (1804-1815) and extended help to France in 1812. This lead to the British invasion of the United States, burning of Washington in 1914, and their defeat by the United States Armed Forces under General Andrew Jackson in 1815.
 
Both Jefferson and Madison were the principal framers of our Constitution. Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in drafting the Declaration of Independence where he told the British, a nation that initiated more wars than any other and subjugated millions that we, the Americans, do not wish to be a part of their Empire that at that time spanned the Earth. James Madison who at his time was called 'The Father of the Constitution,' was the framer of the Bill of Rights which opens with the statement that
 
'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press ...'
 
In a letter to Alexander Smyth (1822) Thomas Jefferson wrote:

'It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Book Of Revelation, and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherencies of our own nightly dreams... What has no meaning admits no explanation.'
 
Thomas Jefferson was the enemy of the religious right, of the people who at his time as in ours want the church be the state established religion as it is in England and Israel. They want to subvert our Constitution based on ideals of the philosophers of the Enlightenment and convert our government to a theocracy. In this context, discussing new European laws against the freedom of speech, Nick Herbert, author of Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics says:

'I say the truth does not need the protection of legislation--only falsehoods do--something I might have stolen from Thomas Jefferson who said: "I swear eternal enmity against any tyranny over the mind of men." The freedom to say what you think is the heart of all good science and is the heart of what it used to mean to be a good American.'

Notes

La Marseillaise

Mireille Mathieu sings La marseillaise