Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830

Lately, I’ve been reading more history, mostly to educate myself. But the other night, I opened Lord Acton’s Lectures on the French Revolution and didn’t get far before I sat up in bed. I was reading about France two centuries ago, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the comparisons to Washington today.

To be honest, most of what I remember about the French Revolution comes from Les Misérables (the musical, not the book). But Acton wasn’t simply retelling history. He was examining what happens when a society loses faith in its institutions. When it becomes certain of its own righteousness. When it begins to believe that power, if claimed in the name of “the people,” no longer needs restraint.

Acton identifies one of the most dangerous ideas unleashed by revolutionary politics: the belief that “the people” cannot be wrong. Once that idea takes hold, democracy no longer protects liberty; it begins to threaten it. Minority rights become obstacles. Institutions become barriers. Opposition becomes treason. And leaders who claim to speak for the people begin to behave as though the law itself must give way.

That is the warning for Washington. The danger does not come only from tyranny imposed from the top. It can also come from democratic language stripped of democratic restraint. It comes from leaders who invoke “the people” while weakening the institutions that protect the people from power itself.

Lord Acton, the 19th-century British historian and moral philosopher, spent his life studying the relationship between liberty and power. Best remembered for his warning that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Acton saw in the French Revolution a timeless lesson: democracy is not protected by passion alone. It survives only when liberty is joined to conscience, and power is held in check by law.

The French Revolution began with the language of liberty. It spoke of the people, justice, equality. It spoke of freedom from erratic power. But Acton saw something deeper and more dangerous. He saw trust in institutions weakening, leaders drunk on certainty, and citizens persuading themselves that noble purposes could justify violence.

That is why the French Revolution remains a cautionary tale for today’s Washington.

A democracy does not collapse only when a tyrant storms the palace. It begins to fail when law becomes an inconvenience, and opponents become traitors.

Washington today is not Paris in 1789. But the warning is unmistakable.

When political leaders claim to speak for “the people” while weakening the very institutions that protect the people, liberty is already in danger. When courts, Congress, the press, civil servants, and constitutional limits are dismissed as obstacles, democracy begins to lose the guardrails that keep passion from becoming power.

Acton understood another danger: the temptation to treat loyalty as a substitute for conscience. “Patriotism,” Acton writes, “cannot absolve a man from his duty to mankind.” That line matters now because patriotism, when stripped of humility and moral responsibility, can become a permission slip for corruption and blind allegiance.

Acton’s great lesson is that democracy requires more than elections. It requires character. It requires humility, truth, respect for law, and the willingness to lose without trying to destroy the system itself.

The warning for Washington is simple:

A republic is not saved by anger or vengeance. It is saved by conscience and leaders strong enough to restrain themselves.