Yes, but those same long-term consequences include the legitimization of the form of slavery known as conscription (by the end of the Revolutionary era Prussia was copying the levees the Revolution made so famous) and mass conscription would continue to contemporary times. Those long-term consequences would include the legitimization of political violence to solve internal quarrels and disputes, which had quite a negative legacy in France. All this on top of the cultural extermination of France's minorities, the utter exclusion of the rural poor from this "universal" political debate when said rural poor were most of the population, and creating the "France as a cultural colony of Paris" dynamic it'd struggle with for the whole 19th century. Worst of all, the massive armies of the age built the sinister precedent of military dictatorship that Lafayette and Dumouriez flirted with and Napoleon embraced.
I guess at this point the argument boils down to whether one thinks that the 19th and 20th centuries (World Wars and all the bad stuff included) were better or worse than the 17th and 18th centuries (feudalism and all the bad stuff included). As a progressive, my answer is clearly that they were better, and by far. You seem to think differently, but at this point we can only agree to disagree.
I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution. I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.
I do think my values align far more with yours than Mikado's, here: I really don't see how one can be an American (or even just be cognizant of the structure and history of American governance) with progressive values (specifically, those relating to diversity, tolerance, and respect for science/the arts) and not pine for a certain amount laicitie and centralization. (Arguably laicitie is today more trouble than it's worth, seeing its use as a bludgeon against Muslim minorities. But that is a relatively recent problem, and the dynamic is very different here on the other side of the pond.) Whether those values would have been dead in the water without the French Revolution, however, is a much more difficult claim to make.
Yes it's fine to use laicite to beat peasantry down with, but "oh no someone use its against a bunch of exotic brown people, we can't let that happen".
