revolutionary ideals
Upheaval's guiding beliefs
Revolutionary ideals are the principles that motivate or justify radical political change—typically including liberty, equality, popular sovereignty, and the overthrow of tyranny.
The phrase most often invokes the American and French revolutions: The founders enshrined revolutionary ideals in the Constitution.
These ideals may be invoked sincerely or ironically, depending on whether the speaker believes a society has lived up to them.
- libertyAbsence of unjust constraint
- equalitySame status for all
- all men are created equalDoctrine of inherent human equivalence
- rights of manInherent human entitlements
- hopeDesire for good outcomes
utopianism · new world order · activism · solidarity · anti-authoritarianism · emancipation · decolonization · constitutionalism · justice · natural rights · republicanism · founding fathers · self-determination · sovereignty · abolitionism · social contract · democracy · Enlightenment
- communismMarx, Marxism, Leninism, Lenin, proletariat
- French RevolutionBastille, guillotine, Robespierre, Marie Antoinette, Jacobins
- Revolution LegacyBastille Day, tricolor flag, Jacobins, liberty cap
- RomanticismWilliam Blake, the sublime, J.M.W. Turner, Eugene Delacroix, emotionalism
- 1848 Revolutionprovisional government, abdication, barricades, universal suffrage, tricolor
revolutionary idealsincrementalism
Change through small steps
gradualism · reformism · evolutionary change · moderation · compromise
revolutionary idealsconservatism
Preference for existing institutions
traditionalism · ancien régime · monarchism · loyalism · orthodoxy
revolutionary idealspolitical realism
Pragmatic statecraft prioritizing interests
resignation · quietism · fatalism · complacency · acquiescence