La Liberté guidant le peuple

Today is Bastille Day which is a National holiday in France which celebrates the storming of the Royalist Prison in 1789 and is seen  as the start of the French Revolution.

This famous picture of revolution by  Eugène Delacroix "Liberty Leading the People" actually refers to a later French July revolution in 1830.

I hate to say on the anniversary of the birth of the Republic that I agree with the ultra left blogger Liam Macuaid that it was a disgrace that yesterday the French Parliament voted to ban the wearing of the Burka by a tiny number of Muslim woman in France.

While personally I would perfer women not to wear such garment and support the punishment of any male relatives that forced a women to wear a Burka against their will (and recognise that in airport security or inside schools they are not appropriate) if a grown women genuinely wants to wear it in public - it is their choice and nobody else's.  It's called Liberté.

Ironically (I love history) this decision to ban Burka would have been without doubt warmly welcomed by the stormers of the Bastille and all sorts of so-called "revolutionaries" until perhaps relatively recent times.  The French in particular tended to be fanatically anti-religious during revolution and would have not understood wannabe modern day revolutionary Liam's no doubt principled (but Petite bourgeoisie?) opposition.