This Day in History: Maximilien Robespierre inaugurated the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France. The Cult of the Supreme Being was a form of deism established in France by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. It was intended to become the state religion of the new French Republic and a replacement for Roman Catholicism. It went unsupported after the fall of Robespierre and was officially banned by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802.
"Robespierre started out as a thoughtful, Enlightenment reformer who championed liberty and opposed the death penalty. On his way to the pinnacle of power during the French Revolution of the 1790s, he crushed liberties, introduced the famed 'Terror' and ordered the guillotining of thousands. Before he lost his physical head by the very same 'National Razor,' he lost his mind, even creating a new religion he called 'the Cult of the Supreme Being' with himself as its high priest." Source
"The 20th Century philosopher Eric Hoffer studied fanatics and the power that fanatics crave. He thought that power brings out the worst in any mortal, that few in number are those who can walk away from it or restrain themselves when they gain it. He wrote,
'The corruption inherent in absolute power derives from the fact that such power is never free from the tendency to turn man into a thing... For the impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.'" Source
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