Those are radical ideas, that laws come from citizens, not from kings or gods, and that those laws should apply to everyone equally? That's a long way from Hammurabi, and in truth it's a long way from the slaveholding Thomas Jefferson. In the 1970s, Chinese President Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought the effects of the French Revolution had been, and he said, it's too soon to say. And in a way, it still is. The French Revolution asked new questions about the nature of people's rights and the derivation of those rights. And we're still answering those questions and sorting through how our answers should shape society today. Must government be of the people to be for the people?