About the destructive French Revolution, historian Otto Scott observed:
"French intellectuals, middle and upper classes had grown ashamed of their country, history and institutions. Such a phenomenon had never before arisen in any nation or race throughout the long history of mankind. …a great loosening began; the country slowly came apart… for the first time since the decadent days of Rome, pornography emerged from its caves and circulated openly in a civilised nation. The Catholic Church in France was intellectually gutted; the priests lost their faith along with the congregations. Strange cults appeared; sex rituals, black magic, satanism. Perversion became not only acceptable, but fashionable. Homosexuals held public balls to which heterosexuals were invited and the police guarded their carriages… the air grew thick with plans to restructure and reconstruct all traditional French society and institutions." (Robespierre - Inside the French Revolution, the Reformer Library, New York, 1974.)