future of the past

"The reality of liberalism, then, was always worse than its appearance. Like the philosophes before them, Liberals hid behind specious maxims, pulling a veil over their true intentions. However much they might protest to the contrary, they were intent on razing the Restoration monarchy to the ground and bringing the church with it. 'It is a fact that today has acquired universal evidence,' warned La France Chretienne in 1821. 'The Liberals are in permanent conspiracy against legitimate governments. They conspire in the assembly, in their pamphlets, in their clubs; they conspire by their principles, their maneuvers, and their emissariess; they conspire every single day, and in every place." (McMahon Darrin, The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity, Oxford University Press, 2001)