A New Thermidorian Reaction

The French revolutionaries of the 18th century were so committed to overthrowing their monarchy that they went so far as to scrub from existence the very calendar of the year. Their goal was quite radical; revising the number and length of weeks in a month and even the number of minutes in an hour. The radicalization did not stop there. It covered the currency, weights, and measures. French populists were done with anything that had to do with their monarchical and Roman-influenced past.

July, a normally warm month, was renamed Thermador, derived from the Greek word “thermos” (heat). And in the French Republic on the 9th of Thermidor (27 July) in 1794, events were surely heated. Maximilien Robespierre and other radical revolutionaries were directly confronted by the National Convention for their harsh governance and bloody reign of terror over the nascent polity. The reaction was severe. The following day, Robespierre was led to the same guillotine that he had used to execute many aristocrats and political enemies. When the blade fell, there was truly a Thermidorian reaction to Robespierre’s radical and abusive behavior. 

There are many in America today who should take note of history. Wildly radical notions have a way of ending badly for those who advocate sweeping changes to societal norms. When our founders created the American nation, they were not seeking to sweep away civilization and replace it with extreme notions that would lead to tyranny and lawlessness. Quite the opposite. They sought to defeat tyranny. They then ordered their revolution through a constitution, initially an inadequate one, but eventually a revised document that defined and formed a well-ordered republic. Finally, they left to us—their progeny—the task of sustaining revolution in accordance with our Constitution. 

We have sustained this republic thus far, but it’s been unsteady of late. There are forces at work who would replace our republic with political formulations that would threaten the freedom the founders left to us. Among those aberrant predilections is granting the Federal government increasing power to rule over us, in some cases by fiat-like executive orders and bureaucratic regulations that have never been passed into law by our Congress. Increasingly we hear of plans and ideas to subvert the free enterprise system that fuels our economy with socialist claptrap that has never worked and almost always leads to tyranny, not freedom. 

Even now we are confronted by “woke” nonsense about who we are as a people, our genders, the words we can use, the terms that are offensive, and a manufactured distorted history of our founding designed to justify the preceding nonsense. Hypersensitive “vocabu-phobes” now demand we abandon any word or term with gossamer-like reference to anything that might be slightly offensive. These silly people would think the Chicago White Sox a racist idea. They don’t deserve serious consideration by thinking people. 

Yet “wokism” has in recent years vexed social norms and sent politicians and captains of industry scurrying to their caucus and boardrooms in abject fear of offending the woke among us and losing votes and profits. That’s until the 12th of Ventôse (2 March 2023) when the city of Chicago denied their woke mayor a second term, the first time in 40 years a sitting “Windy City” chief executive was denied reelection, receiving only 17 percent of the vote. It’s very appropriate that woke Mayor Lori Lightfoot was blow away in the French Republic’s month of Ventôse, Latin for “windy.” And when asked “why,” she posited it was because of her gender and race, ironically the two reasons she was elected four years ago. 

Lightfoot didn’t deal seriously with the endemic violence and murder in her city. On the woke agenda, she was all in. Now she is all out. What happened? This is what happened. Woke voters awakened. In a sense the woke became the “quickened” and in doing so, became alive to the realities of what political correctness, identity politics, and an abundance of superficiality—as opposed to common sense—does to a society, indeed to a civilization. Chicago voters reacted. Others will follow.

In 2022, the American people, somewhat underwhelmed by Republican candidates across the country—still managed to hand the House of Representatives to the Grand Old Party (GOP). And in doing so gave evidence of tiring of the woke agenda.  Not tired of, but clearly tiring. 

But as of the 2nd of Ventôse, 2023, the citizens of Chicago were fed up. They sent a huge message to liberals who have signed onto the woke approach. Now they see what the voters did in the “Windy City” as a woke reproach. More of this will follow at ballot boxes, not guillotines. But Lori Lightfoot, it turns out, did us a great favor. She created a Ventôsian Reaction in America. Vive la France.

PS: Just 32 years ago this month, the 1st Infantry Division, the famed Big Red One, liberated Kuwait from Iraqi forces. It’s a perfect time to read about that experience and you can in my book Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War. Order one today at this link and I will personalize and autograph it for you. Then use these last winter days to read about an American Army at its best!