“There is the problem Americans have, in high school textbooks as well as on television, with their own past. It is as if we were embarrassed by the passion that made our Revolution, all those radicals in wigs and knickers. Revolutions are supposed to happen elsewhere in France or China, with deplorable consequences. That once upon a time we defied a king and dreamed up a Republic and wrote something as darling as the First Amendment is sort of a fairy tale…Our Founding Fathers were, well, so fatherly, weren’t they, and not at all like Bolsheviks, not a Robespierre among them. So get rid of Sam Adams: Dismiss him as a demagogue. Get rid of Tom Paine: Dismiss him as a pamphleteer. Invent George, so we will eat our porridge.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=IuYCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70&dq=robespierre&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N4SzU6e5N86wyATDioCQDA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBzh4#v=onepage&q=robespierre&f=false