No, Sire. It Is a Revolution.

It's easy to forget, but revolutions don't just fall out of the sky.

They brew.

Slowly.

Like a storm gathering on the horizon that everyone convinces themselves will somehow blow over.

Take France in 1789.

Paris was in turmoil. Bread was scarce. The government was broke. Protesters filled the streets. Then came the storming of the Bastille. Heads were carried through the streets on pikes. The old order was beginning to crack.

A famous story tells how King Louis XVI, safe in Versailles and struggling to grasp what was unfolding, exclaimed, "This is a revolt!"

One of his advisers quietly replied:

"No, Sire. It is a revolution."

Whether those exact words were spoken hardly matters. They captured a profound truth. Revolutions are rarely recognised while they are happening. Most people mistake them for temporary unrest.

Only later do they realise the world they once knew has disappeared.

Over the last few years, I have found myself thinking about that exchange more than once.

Cities have burned. Crime has surged in many places. Businesses have been vandalised. Statues have been pulled down. Politicians have often seemed more interested in explaining the unrest than confronting it. People have discovered that expressing the wrong opinion can carry a heavy social price.

It began to feel like something more than protest.

It felt like a cultural revolution.

For years we've been told that our nations are fundamentally wicked, that our history is little more than a catalogue of shame, and that entire generations should apologise for events they neither witnessed nor controlled.

I don't carry personal guilt for the actions of people who lived centuries before I was born. Nor do I believe shame is a reliable moral compass.

I still believe that the great English-speaking democracies - imperfect though they have always been - have produced extraordinary freedoms, remarkable generosity and institutions worth defending.

Yet confidence in those achievements is steadily being eroded.

History suggests that when a civilisation loses confidence in itself, it becomes dangerously vulnerable.

France offers a sobering example.

By 1789 the kingdom was financially exhausted after years of war and crippling debt. Poor harvests sent bread prices soaring. Ordinary families struggled simply to eat.

Political leadership faltered.

Public confidence evaporated.

The streets filled with anger.

Long before the first stones were thrown at the Bastille, however, another revolution had already begun.

It had started in books.

Thinkers such as Rousseau and Voltaire challenged long-established ideas about religion, authority and society. Their writings inspired important debates, but they also contributed to a climate in which many people came to see every traditional institution as something to be dismantled rather than reformed.

When economic crisis arrived, those intellectual currents became political torrents.

The historian Otto Scott argued that one of France's deepest problems was not merely financial collapse, but the moment its educated classes became embarrassed by their own civilisation.

That observation has always stayed with me.

Scott described a press increasingly drawn to scandal rather than substance, eager to mock the Church, ridicule authority and celebrate excess. Public standards weakened while cynicism flourished.

Reading those descriptions today can feel surprisingly familiar.

Modern technology has changed the scenery, but some of the patterns seem remarkably alike.

Entertainment grows ever more vulgar.

Families struggle under immense cultural pressure.

Faith is dismissed as outdated.

National history is increasingly taught as little more than a record of oppression.

Identity is encouraged to become something performed rather than something lived.

Whether one agrees with every aspect of that assessment or not, it is difficult to deny that many Western societies are experiencing a profound loss of cultural confidence. 

History teaches that this kind of decay makes revolutionary thinking far easier to sell.

The French Revolution itself became increasingly radical.

Maximilien Robespierre believed virtue could be imposed by force. Equality would be achieved, even if thousands had to die in pursuit of it.

The result was the Reign of Terror.

Around forty thousand people lost their lives during that period. Many were executed. Many others died in prison or civil conflict.

Perhaps the greatest irony was this:

Revolutions rarely destroy only the old establishment.

They almost always consume their own architects.

Yesterday's heroes become today's enemies.

The same pattern appeared later in Russia.

In Germany.

In China.

Different ideologies.

Different slogans.

The same human temptation - to tear everything down in pursuit of a perfect society.

The sequence is remarkably familiar.

First come the attacks on history.

Then the symbols.

Then faith.

Then the family.

Then free speech.

Eventually, disagreement itself becomes unacceptable.

Fear becomes a political tool.

Shame becomes a weapon.

Censorship becomes a virtue.

During the darkest days of the French Revolution, ordinary families queued through the night for bread. Rumours spread faster than facts. Crowds attacked imagined enemies. Public order collapsed.

Chaos created an opening for authority of a different kind.

From the ashes emerged Napoleon Bonaparte.

The revolution that promised liberty eventually crowned an emperor.

That is one of history's enduring lessons.

Revolutions often begin by promising freedom.

They frequently end by concentrating power.

So where are we now?

I believe we are living through a cultural revolution - not one fought with muskets and guillotines, but one waged through headlines, hashtags, bureaucracies, classrooms and algorithms.

Its battlefield is memory.

Its weapon is shame.

Its prize is the confidence of a civilisation.

History tells us that societies become vulnerable long before they collapse. They first lose faith in themselves.

France did.

The question is whether we will.

Unlike those living in 1789, we have the advantage of hindsight.

We have seen where contempt for history, division among neighbours and the abandonment of shared values can ultimately lead.

History never repeats itself exactly.

But it often whispers.

If we are wise enough to listen, perhaps we can choose a different ending.

If we remember who we are.