Liberty and Napoleon

You know, I've had a lot of really good, thoughtful ideas for blog posts lately. Most of these ideas come to me while I am sitting in my AP European History class because we talk about really thought inspiring things in there. The problem with it all is that I always forget what I want to write about by the time I get home. That's what I get for having the class right before lunch. Often I even write down the ideas in a notebook. Sometime I even look at these ideas when I am trying to come up with something to blog about. The inspiration never comes back though.

Today we were talking about Napoleon. He did not believe in liberty. What we were discussing was whether that was acceptable or not and if we thought what Napoleon did while ruling France was acceptable. Now, before I go on to discuss my thoughts on this matter I have to say something, I firmly believe that every person should have the right to say and create what they want. I believe that people try too hard to censor things out of society. I am firmly against book banning and even movie banning for the sake of not offending anyone.

However, I believe that when talking about whether or not Napoleon was right to keep that freedom of speech and expression from the French people there is more that needs to be considered. The French people had been living under really bad conditions for quite some time before Napoleon came in and took over. They were not in a good place economically and their government was failing them time and time again. What Napoleon was giving them was safety. A government for the people, if not by the people. For the first time in years the French economy was allowing most people to live well. France was quickly becoming a strong nation in Europe and it was due to the changes that Napoleon had enforced.

If he had allowed people to talk about whatever they wanted (maybe about how wrong the things he was doing was in the eyes of the people) then there was a chance that the people would start another revolution. Be happy, was what Napoleon was saying. Be happy that you have money. That the reign of terror is over and that you can live in peace.

Is it really that bad that the French people did not have the freedom to say whatever they wanted? I do not believe that it was. They were not able to talk about how horrible Napoleon was or how wrong the things he was doing were, but they had money, homes, and food. This was a major improvement from before.

I wrote an article on censoring for the Centurion (Layton High's newspaper) and I am planning on posting it soon. However, after talking about Napoleon today I really think I could write a better article. It is hard to express ones thoughts on such a big topic in a page and a half.