#177 We See What We Want to See

Global Policy Watch #1: How the Sri Lankan Economy Unraveled<br/><br/><em>Insights on policy issues making news around the world</em><br/><br/><em>&#8212; RSJ</em><br/><br/>What people do when they storm palaces is broadly instructive about what comes next.<br/><br/>In 1792, the <strong>French insurgents</strong> determined to end whatever remained of the <em>ancien regime</em> stormed the palace of Tuileries and confronted the Swiss Guards who were defending the palace on the orders of Louis XVI. Blood, gore and massacre followed, at the end of which about eleven hundred combatants were killed. These included, as J.M. Thomson wrote in his history of the French Revolution:<br/><br/>..common citizens from every branch of the trading and working classes of Paris, including hair-dressers, harness-makers, carpenters, joiners, house-painters, tailors, hatters, boot-makers, locksmiths, laundry-men, and domestic servants.<br/><br/><strong>The Bolsheviks</strong> were not to be outdone on the night of October 25, 1917, when they assaulted the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg on the orders of Lenin. The insurrectionists barely met with any resistance from the yunkers, the Cossacks and the women&#8217;s battalion guarding the palace. To quote John Reed from <em>Ten Days That Shook The World</em> (1935):<br/><br/>On both sides of the main gateway the doors stood wide open, light streamed out and from the huge pile came not the slightest sound. Carried along by the eager wave of men, we were swept into the right hand entrance, opening into a great bare vaulted room, the cellar of the East wing, from which issued a maze of corridors and stair-cases.&#160;<br/><br/>...One man went strutting around with a bronze clock perched on his shoulder; another found a plume of ostrich feathers, which he stuck in his hat. The looting was just beginning when somebody cried, &#8216;Comrades! Don't touch anything! Don't take anything! This is the property of the People!&#8217; Immediately twenty voices were crying, &#8216;Stop! Put everything