Thinking about some of the posts I've been reading: Peace isn't always nice. Peace may rest on a false calm dependent on repression and injustice. A revolution may have moments of joy in it, though also a great deal of pain, fear, and loss. Perhaps--I'm glad I can't speak from experience--those who have been in a long revolution may be glad in the end to accept an imperfect peace for the sake of not having to fight anymore. This is a reason why we study history, those of us who do--to help us consider answers others have given to questions like that, answers which are sometimes written in blood.

This carries me back to our early discussion of the meaning of revolution. A student once asked me how you know if you're in a revolution. I'm embarrassed to remember that I gave a rather flippant answer--It's like being in love. If you are, you know. (I was younger then.) Now I think the answer depends partly on whether the challengers win. If they win, they write the history, and it becomes our glorious revolution of sacred memory. If they lose, it wasn't a revolution. Maybe a rebellion, or a riot. Maybe just street crime. If the struggle goes on evenly matched for a very long time, maybe then it's a civil war. I'm not sure.