Supporters of the presidential candidate who lost the election stormed into Washington, D.C., destroying property, attacking and injuring police, and causing major damage to buildings in the city.  Vicious signs threatening the winner's supporters were everywhere.

The violence was met with universal condemnation.  The president whose party lost the election spoke, issuing a strong statement condemning the violence of his supporters and saying, "You have defiled the seat of American democracy.  To those who engage in acts of violence and destruction: you do not represent our country.  And to those who broke the law: you will pay."

The media rushed to demand statements condemning the violence from every elected official in the losing presidential candidate's party.  Those officials were more than glad to comply.  Strong statements of condemnation from virtually every official of the losing party were ubiquitous.  Violence was not to be tolerated by anyone.

Only none of that happened.  At President Trump's inauguration in 2017, there was rioting, arson, and looting by Hillary Clinton–supporters.  They caused major damage to four downtown businesses.  Two hundred people were arrested.  Neither Hillary Clinton nor President Obama, nor any Democrat elected official, condemned the violence.

The media never demanded that any member of the Democrat party condemn what had happened.  Coverage of the violence was desultory.  The media were more interested in whether President Trump "lied" about the size of the crowds supporting him.

Unsurprisingly, violence became more acceptable over the next four years.  A senator was physically attacked and hospitalized.  A Bernie Sanders–supporter shot up a baseball field, and a congressman nearly died.  Members of the Trump administration and Republicans were repeatedly physically threatened and harassed.  Thugs surrounded the homes of Republican officials, yelling from loudspeakers and frightening families.  After Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed, mobs tried to storm the Supreme Court building.

Then in the summer of 2020, cities across the country were burned, looted, and pillaged.  A dozen people died.  Billions of dollars in damage were sustained.  Yet there was not one word of condemnation that summer at the Democrat party convention.  Incoming vice president Kamala Harris, other Democrat leaders, and many in the media and academia instead excused the violence.

It was only when a handful of Trump-supporting thugs (quite possibly urged on and aided by Antifa) stormed the Capitol that everyone suddenly became appalled by the violence.  The media across the country demanded contrition and condemnation from every Republican official, down to the local level.  The Establishment deemed insufficient President Trump's words, quoted above, condemning his supporters who mobbed the Capitol building.  Hysterical demands for Republicans to resign and calls for criminal investigations of those who support the president were heard across the country.

The violence was appalling and indefensible — just like the violence over the last four years.

What happened in the aftermath of the Capitol violence is evidence of a disturbing trend in this country.  Since the dawn of civilization, those who seek absolute power use the same tactics:

(1) Demonize and dehumanize your political opponents.  Hillary Clinton called her political enemies "deplorables."  The Nazis called their opponents "undesirables."

(2) Impose collective guilt for any criminal or wrongful conduct of any one of your political opponents' supporters, while minimizing or ignoring the criminal conduct of your own supporters.

(3) Demand that your opponents abase themselves and resign because of the conduct of others.

(4) Threaten to prosecute as criminals those who were not involved in any violence.

(5) Take away your opponents' right to speak, destroy their careers, and humiliate and shame them and their families.

These are the tactics that have become acceptable in our country.  They are the tactics of the radical woke generation, wholly supported by the Democrat party and its Establishment allies across a wide spectrum of American civilization.

But the "radicals" of the Woke generation are not radical at all.  They are hidebound reactionaries fighting to return our country to an antediluvian form of government that consigns people to castes from which there is no escape and metes out specific rights, privileges, or punishments depending on what caste one belongs to.  That ancient form of government reached its apogee in the 20th century, when tens of millions were humiliated and silenced, lost their livelihoods, were starved, robbed, ultimately tortured, and killed merely because they belonged to a despised group.

Our nation was founded on a truly radical political doctrine: every person is an individual, with immutable rights that the state cannot take away.  Nobody's humanity is defined by immutable characteristics that, according to the state, are shared by every member of a caste.  We must legally fight to return to the radical doctrine of individual rights and individual worth, or we are in danger of returning instead to the anciens régimes of the past, where totalitarians determine our fate.

Image: Margaret Thatcher on collective guilt.  AZ Quotes.