Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2006) ("Here was the problem that had driven Robespierre mad: How can you tell a sincere man in politics? When the language of those who work for the public good is so easily adopted by those who only work for themselves, who can tell a true for a false patriot? And how? Robespierre, absolutely sincerely, did not see himself as the leader of just another faction. He saw himself as one of the persecuted, someone who had fought for the republic against 'tyrants. men of blood, oppressors of patriotism.' After his death his enemies turned the very same words against him--he became the tyrant, the man of blood, responsible for the worst excesses, if not the entire system, of the Terror. He would not have been surprised. The slipperiness of language, that great gulf between what is said and what is true, was precisely what he complained of in this last of his astonishing speeches." Id. at 344-345.) Food for thought for the 2016 presidential election where the bullshit reached new lows every day, and where the choice was between a chronic bullshiter and a pathological liar. Is this the future of American politics?).
Francois Furet, Revollutionary France 1770-180, translated from the French by Antonia Nevil (Oxford, UK, & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992).
