The 13 Vendémiaire of the Government Class

The French Revolution was Utopian, in the sense that advocated a near total overthrow of traditional social structures, and replacement with rational (lucide) substitutes. For example, the calendar was entirely revamped, with different names for the months ("Brumaire" from brumme, or fog; "Vendémiaire" from vendange, or grape harvest).

This sweeping restructuring of society relied not just on the intellect of the Revolutionary leaders, but on the strong arm of enforcers to cow the opposition, and in the Paris of the 1790s, that meant the Mob.

The ancients described in detail where that led, and so it was no surprise to find the Parisian Mob lead to the Terror that devoured the leading Revolutionaries: Hébert, Danton, and finally Robespierre himself. The Royalist opposition decided that two could play at that game, and brought their own mob to Paris. On October 5, 1795 (13 Vendémiaire of the Year 3 under the new Republican calendar), a young general Napoleon Bonaparte dispersed the mob with a "whiff of grapeshot".

The American Revolution, while equally radical, had taken a very different path. It was perhaps best described as "Practical" rather than Utopian. Americans had a distrust of intellectuals then, that has continued down to this day; despite Thomas Jefferson's suggestion that the Tree of Liberty's need to be refreshed by the blood of Patriots and Tyrants, George Washington dispersed the Mob on this side of the Pond.

Blogfather JayG writes of the latter day mob, terrorizing a teenager in a Washington D.C. suburb:

This is a frightening series of events on many levels. It represents true democracy - mob rule - in that this group of goons made a concerted effort to intimidate, harass, and otherwise physically threaten someone simply on the basis of the job they perform. It's a chilling glimpse into the future where a protected class - in this case a labor union - is allowed unchecked aggression simply because they agree with the cause. There are reports that DC police accompanied the protestors - if that is the case, every single officer who was there, along with the supervisors who authorized it, should be fired and prosecuted for aiding and abetting criminal action (trespass, at the very least).

This isn't the first example, either:

• The New Black Panther voter intimidation
• The assault on (and hospitalization of) Keith Gladney
  
• SEIU member intimidation
• SEIU attack on (and hospitalization of) a 70 year old woman at a Detroit Union meeting
  
• ACORN bussing goon to intimidate AIG executives' families
  

It's street muscle to back up the lucidité of the Intellectual Elite, embodied in the President of Harvard Law Review the United States. And make no mistake - the intellectual elite is sympathetic: Woody Allen and Tom Friedman are waxing wistful for the Iron Grip of Dictatorship:

So, Allen and Friedman–and others who have kept their faces before us for 40 years by coasting on the work of their youth, because they’ve done nothing memorable, lately–are feeling the shifting sand beneath their feet, and they’re wondering why America can’t simply submit to a fantasy of Limited Dictatorship. It’s so inconvenient for these elites to have to deal with the noise of the bourgeoisie – commoners who presume to opine on anything and who dare to object to the incessant lecturing from their betters.

But this isn't Greece, with a history of petrol bombs in the streets and the Colonels in the Presidential Palace. Jay sums up a uniquely American* view:

If this is the direction they choose, it will lead to bloodshed. At some point there will be another "protest" like this one where someone panics and cranks some 00 buck into the crowd.

The problem that the entire Intellectual Class faces is that they are selling a Utopian world view to a country that has traditionally rejected Utopian visions. Street muscle won't help advance the cause, but will simply accelerate the collapse on the Intellectual Class and its thugs. The Mastodon Main Stream Media is doing its best to ignore these stories (and in my mind, what isn't a story is the clearest proof of media bias), but they're just accelerating their own irrelevance. With all the talk of "violent" tea partiers and all the studious ignoring of violent leftist and union goons, the story can't be bottled up.

And the story is: Americans don't like the mob, and don't like those who rely on it.

This November is the most important election of my lifetime. The American people have to show those on the margins - the do we join in the violence, or turn a blind eye to it folks - that they're on the losing side.

* Unique when compared with the rest of the world, of course. I don't believe that this is at all unique here.