Friday, March 29, AD 2024 8:43am

And a Good Time Was Had By Some

 

 

What madness! How could they allow that rabble to enter? Why do they not sweep away four or five hundred of them with the cannon? The rest would take themselves off very quickly.

Napoleon’s reaction after viewing a mob massacring the Swiss Guard at the Tuileries, August 10, 1792

 

 

 

Riots continued overnight around the nation:

 

In nearly a dozen states, governors called for the deployment of National Guard personnel as many large cities faced a third or even fourth night of destruction that included arson fires and attacks on police vehicles.

Go here to read the rest.  The Minnesota National Guard has learned the old lesson that there is only one way to deal with rioters – overwhelming force:

About a half hour after the curfew started, Minnesota National Guard soldiers began firing tear gas, paint rounds and rubber bullets at the groups of protesters violating the curfew in Minneapolis’ streets. Many protesters scattered as law enforcement advanced at nightfall. There was no sign of the restraint seen on previous nights. One video posted to Twitter showed law enforcement firing paint rounds at people sitting on their south Minneapolis porch.

Go here to read the rest.  Riots spread because rioting for some is fun and profitable.  A sad feature of fallen human nature is a joy in destruction that is just below the surface in some of us.  The criminal element, always not an insignificant part of the population in the slums of any urban center, are only too happy to have an excuse to engage in looting.  The honest majority in the poorer areas, where the riots almost always occur, huddle in their homes as they see their streets occupied by vandals.  The only way to stop riots is to make the rioters understand that play time is over, and that what was fun for them, is now a dangerous sport.

 

It is false, ‘says Napoleon,that we fired first with blank charge; it had been a waste of life to do that. Most false: the firing was with sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain that here was no sport; the rabbets and plinths of Saint-Roch Church show splintered by it, to this hour. Singular: in old Broglie`s time, six years ago, this Whiff of Grapeshot was promised; but it could not be given then, could not have profited then. Now, however, the time is come for it, and the man; and behold, you have it; and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is blown into space by it, and become a thing that was!’

Words placed into the mouth of Napoleon by historian Thomas Carlyle, French Revolution,  in reference to Napoleon’s use of cannon to bring a Paris Royalist mob to a screeching halt on October 5, 1795.

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Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 4:57am

Napoleon had it right. Don’t mess around with rioters. 100 dead rioters would give them pause the next time Soros offered to pay them.

Dave G.
Dave G.
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 6:26am

My question is: Do we know the killing of George Floyd was racially motivated? If so, how? Everyone says this is about racial injustice. Everyone: religious leader, politicians of both parties, journalists, bloggers, everyone. How do we know this?

Clinton
Clinton
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 6:33am

It’s interesting to compare the media’s reaction to the Michigan anti-lockdown protests earlier this month vs. the “protests” that started in Minnesota.

The anti-lockdown protesters in Michigan were law-abiding, aside from their rejection of their governor’s stay-at-home edicts. They peaceably assembled to air their grievances and then went home. For that, they were vilified by the press. We were told their assembly was irresponsible and dangerous. They were “threatening”. How dare they, Karens huffed. Somehow Trump was to blame for the frustration those citizens had for their Governor.

Contrast the media then with the media now. Most news outlets still refuse to call the riots what they are.
I saw an absurd news clip of a reporter on the scene, telling the camera in all seriousness that the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful— while directly behind him a building was engulfed in flames. And somehow, in a city and state run by Democrats, Trump is to blame for the police brutality that sparked it all. Rrriiight…

What should I conclude when I see the media push two such absurd narratives? Somehow, the peaceful protest is threatening, and the violent mob is a peaceful protest?
How can that be?

John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 6:54am

Dave, we know it wasn’t racist.
The former officer worked security at a nightclub with a predominate black patronage, so said the owner. The victim, Floyd George also worked at the nightclub, but never worked the same days or hours as the former officer. It appears, I could be wrong, that his wife, who is now divorcing him, is of Asian descent. The victim according to a UK newspaper has a long criminal record, mostly in Texas, including 3-4 stints in jails and prisons. The small amount I’ve read about the medical autopsy report indicates the intoxicants along with underlining heart conditions were either the cause of the death or a primary cause of death. Even if that wasn’t true, it wasn’t murder since he didn’t plan or set out to kill this man or any other black man.

So people are “protesting”. For justice? What do they want? The officer was fired, he will now be charged for murder AND manslaughter. How he can be charged for both I don’t understand, perhaps they’ll tack on genocide too.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 7:24am

My grandfather was a NYPD officer in the 1920′ to 1944. He died when my father was 17. Apparently, there were riots in NYC in those years. In the bad old days, police officers shot at the rioters. There were rules. No longer.

For 50 or 60 years, Democrat governor, Democrat mayor, Democrat city council, black police chief have been misruling every city that is presently burning.

For the past 60 or 70 years, it seems every six or eight years, brainless nut jobs exercise their ‘right’ to run wild in destructive riots wrecking their neighborhoods.

These desultory, African-American funerary rituals are results of 100 years of failed progressive programs, which not only did not solve any societal problem, but evidently worsened them.

Pinky
Pinky
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 8:39am

You cannot have 30 million layoffs, an entire society of terrified shut-ins, and open liquor stores, and expect things to go well. I’m not exonerating anyone by saying that. Just, let’s be honest. No one’s rioting because they’re afraid of the police. They’re rioting because they aren’t, and because they don’t have anything else to do.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 12:12pm

Pretty sure your typical rioter didn’t have much else to do before the layoffs and the lockdowns, except wait for the next riot.

Foxfier
Admin
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 12:15pm

No one’s rioting because they’re afraid of the police.

Yep.

They think that they can beat the police, because the guy next to them won’t stop them.

Rudolph Harrier
Rudolph Harrier
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 12:49pm

The standard is that if a white does anything against a black for any reason, it’s racially motivated.

In contrast if a black does anything against a white it’s never racially motivated. In the Twin Cities in 2017 a Somalian police officer shot a white woman who had called the police to report a possible rape in progress. The only explanation given was that the officer got spooked and fired his gun without thinking. No one suggested that the attack was racially motivated. In fact, many newspapers suggested that the attempts to prosecute to the officer were racially motivated. And it goes without saying that there were no riots over the event.

Now imagine the same thing happening but with the races reversed. There’s no doubt about how it would have been interpreted.

John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 4:41pm

Rudolph,
Many “protesters” are asking for that same Somali former police officer to be released from prison in the name of racial justice.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Sunday, May 31, AD 2020 5:34pm

Well, he’s appealing his conviction, so maybe whites will get to riot, pillage and burn, peacefully, of course.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Monday, June 1, AD 2020 10:12am

Napoleon’s comment showsoncw again history repeats itself. The inexplicable refusal to even defend one’s on life in the face of other barbarism is beyond understanding.

And we are moving very close to that moment

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