By John F Di Leo –
Politicians have an old joke – maybe too truthful and unfunny to be called a joke – about the politician who sees a crowd marching along, and mutters to himself, “I’d better find out where they’re going, so I can wriggle my way to the front and lead them there.”
This date in history, August 26, holds a worthwhile lesson on this subject. It was on August 26, 1789, when the Marquis de Lafayette and the Abbe Saiyes (allegedly with lots of advice from the USA ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson), published their Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, designed to be one of the cornerstones of the French Revolutionary government.
They didn’t intend for the French Revolution to be a bloodbath, after all. Much of the French nobility was honestly trying to do the right thing, to gradually and responsibly guide the country toward republican governance under a figurehead monarch. They thought the Paris mob, already visibly dangerous from their ghastly behavior at the practically-empty Bastille, could be controlled, their energy harnessed in support of this worthy goal.
But the Paris mob could not be controlled. They were too violent, too bloodthirsty, too angry, and too far removed from the honorable philosophical underpinnings of the Marquis de Lafayette and his allies, to ever cooperate, much less be controlled.
The Marquis and his faction did their best, nobly trying to behave like a modern constitutional republic, while hordes of marauding thugs engaged in terrorism across the country.
The first French Revolution wasn’t replaced by their infamous reign of terror all at once; it was a gradual change, as factions shifted in the assembly, as conditions on the ground grew ever more independent of the philosophical debates indoors.
External viewers could see it – Edmund Burke famously recognized the telltale signs of French societal collapse early on, and wrote the book on it before anyone else – but many in the assembly itself carried on, idealistically committed to the delusion that everything was fine… until they found themselves fitted in the guillotine themselves, ready to become fodder for a monstrous crowd’s bloodthirsty appetites.
We may find ourselves trapped in a very similar situation today, here in the United States.
Many years ago, at least half a century ago, in fact, the Democratic Party decided to hitch their wagon to the criminal element.
The Democratic Party started inviting illegal aliens into the country, in blatant defiance of our immigration laws, thereby intentionally creating a permanent underclass living in constant fear, surviving in ever-expanding, ever more nihilistic, black market economic conditions.
The Democratic Party also started undermining the criminal justice system, making it harder to convict non-criminals, shortening the time in prison for those who were convicted, and making use of any possible excuse for mass early releases of such convicts, sometimes by the tens of thousands at a time. For decades now, the prison doors have been flying open for reasons ranging from alleged “unpleasantly cramped conditions in the jails” to fear of COVID-19.
Today, we find ourselves in a perfect storm of such problems.
The Democratic Party in 2020, finding itself ever more marginalized from the mainstream American voter, looking straight at a likely landslide defeat by popular incumbent Republican president, has unleashed tens of thousands, possibly even more, of hardened criminals onto the American scene, through massive early releases from state and local jail. In recent years, the state’s attorneys offices in major cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, have issued internal instructions to refuse to even prosecute whole classes of crimes, ensuring that the criminal element be free to wreak the havoc that consumes us today.
The regular Democratic voter, the traditional liberal with a good heart and an instinctive commitment to fairness and tranquility, has his or her partisan affiliation shaken to the core. They may have been able to spend the past 50 years closing their eyes to the signs… Democrat politicians may have been able to convince them that Republican warnings of gloom and doom, from their soft-on-crime policies, were exaggerations… but no longer.
Today, the voters of Chicago, Portland, Seattle, New York City, and now even smaller towns like Kenosha Wisconsin, are being mugged by reality, as the fruition of these 50 years of criminal-coddling policies is on full and undeniable display.
How many Democratic voters, terrified and furious at the riots gripping our nation, tune in to the Democratic convention last week, and as they watched in shock and disgust, waited in vain for an explanation, for a response, even for some acknowledgment of the hell that these policies have created?
How many Democrat and independent voters watched the Democrat convention and were converted, not into Biden voters, but into Trump voters? How many Americans were convinced by the Democratic convention of 2020 that the Democratic Party is their enemy, not their friend?
The Republican party is far from perfect; it has been to meek, too sheepish, in its efforts to oppose leftism over the years.
But at least the Republican Party understands what’s causing this crisis, and for once, the Republican Party has a leader who enunciates it, and is committed to doing his best to set the nation back on track.
Will the American people learn their lesson, this year? In the face of these endless riots, destroying city after city from coast to coast… will people finally realize that you can’t control a mob, that you can’t harness the power of violent thugs for anything but evil?
Will the American people rise up against these riots, against this lawlessness, and against the people responsible for it, by delivering a landslide victory for Donald Trump and the Republicans, up and down ballot, In this fall’s election?
It’s too soon to tell. But the ingredients are certainly there, and the day of reckoning is fast approaching.
Copyright 2020 John F Di Leo
John F Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international trade compliance trainer, writer, and actor. A past chairman of the Ethnic American Council and the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has been writing for Illinois Review since 2009.
Don’t miss an article! Use the free tool in the margin to sign up for Illinois Review’s free email notification service, so you always know when Illinois Review publishes new content!
