[The following, by Daniel Greenfield, is crossposted from Sultan Knish.]

Liberals have never been too fond of democracy. Even when they win elections, they prefer to treat those victories as "historic events" that are almost supernatural in nature, to avoid dwelling on the fact that what really happened was that the votes were counted, and they racked up more than the other side. Instead they condescendingly describe their victories as a sign that the country has reached a new level of ethical and intellectual awareness. Like a kindergarten teacher handing out gold stars, liberals pat the country on the head (at least the right parts of it) for making the right decision.

As liberals see it, their high level of moral and intellectual awareness, and compassion for all creatures great and small, gives them a permanent mandate for social change. Elections sometimes interfere with the implementation of that mandate, but the mandate itself still goes on. Liberals can't possibly lose the mandate, since it derives not from the "will of the people", but from the tenets of liberalism itself, a perverted version of Natural Rights, in which the officially oppressed peoples of the United States and the world are entitled to all the wealth redistribution they can get. As long as they remain faithful to the liberal agenda, then their mandate is irrevocable.

When liberals do lose elections, they don't attribute it to the will of the people, but rather to the racist white patriarchal majority rising up to obstruct their reforms. The old Communist narrative of revolution vs counterrevolution defines their worldview, not the American narrative in which elected officials are employees, rather than masters or owners, who can be fired or rather not hired back, by the electorate at will during the designated review periods we call elections.

So, American liberals live in perpetual fear of the mob. Not the mob that controls some of their unions, or the mobs that used to loot and burn cities under the influence of their propaganda-- but the royalist definition of the mob, as the people of the country who imagine that they have a right to have some say in its laws and taxes.

Every time liberals lose an election, whether there is or there isn't a populist movement such as the Tea Party associated with it, they blame the "mob". Obama's infamous "clinging to their guns and religion" line all too accurately sums up how liberals envision that mob. Liberal pundits pen pieces on the dangers of populism. Liberal cartoonists begin depicting the American people as crazy and dangerous. All it takes is a lost election, and suddenly liberals flash back some two centuries to sound like the Royalists of the 1770's, worried that all these populist mobs are going to make it impossible to run the country.

In only two years, the liberal press has gone from patting the country on the head for the wisdom and maturity of electing Obama, to hitting it on the nose with a newspaper for kicking out his congress. It's not that they can't make up their mind, it's that as in Soviet elections, they limit the role of the people to ratifying the decisions of their leaders, and grow very outraged when the people overstep their boundaries, and actually begin throwing out the leaders instead. The people are supposed to show up at designated events to cheer their leaders, not storm the Bastille or tear down the Berlin Wall.

Liberal pundits typically describe "the mob" as anti-intellectual. But that's only because they were actually stupid enough to believe that the likes of JFK, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were intellectuals. But "the mob" isn't anti-intellectual, it's anti-organizational. And JFK, WJC and BHO were organization men. They were not noted for their deep and penetrating intelligence, but for their ability to recite memorized speeches and summon up the vibe of a "New Age" in which everyone would be happier and better taken care of than ever before. And in which liberals would no longer have to feel ashamed of America.

Liberalism is not intellectual, it's organizational. It creates and expands organizations that are meant to help the public, but end up taking power out of their hands. Liberalism's organizational strategy is essentially a slow paced coup against the American electorate. And like most tyrants, liberals have to live in fear of the mob showing up at their palace gates. The transfer of power from the electorate to the bureaucracy, the unions and the associated non-governmental organizations is supposed to prevent that from happening, but it will take time to completely disempower "the mob". Because the mills of the bureaucracy grind slowly and the coup still isn't complete.

While they may fancy themselves to be intellectuals, the last time liberals had an original idea was around 1906. Everything else is just the clumsy implementation. Like 21st century Fourierists, they keep fiddling with inherently unworkable economic, political and social models-- while blaming all their setbacks on the opposition. It's never the ideologically influenced model that fails, it's always the skeptics and the rebels and the greedy capitalists and counterrevolutionaries who get in the way. The difference between an intellectual and an idiot, is that the former can recognize when he's wrong. That makes liberalism, the sad ideology of idiots who are never wrong, they're just not "messaging" correctly.

So liberals can never ask for help, even when they need it. When they lose elections, it's never because of their policies, but because they weren't speaking slowly enough so "the mob" could understand them. Because they're just "too smart". Like mourners at the grave, they weep for Barack Hussein Obama, who was just too good for this world. Too smart and noble for the rabble to appreciate him. Like royalists reacting to a deposed king, they only have two modes. To complain that the king brought it on himself because he wasn't aggressive enough at putting down the rabble, and to bemoan the fall of a noble era at the hands of men and women of no account.

The incompatibility of democracy and the Nanny State means this crisis will recur every few elections. The premise of the liberal ideal, the Nanny State, is that ordinary people are unfit to look after themselves or their best interests. And if that's true, then how can they possibly be trusted to vote in elections? Of course they can't. They're "the mob", a dangerously unreasoning mass stirred up by the enemies of the revolution, who somehow always seem to outsmart the Leftectuals even though they're completely beneath them.

The Democratic party has become the monarchist party, and each time they lose, we're subject to the same absurd spectacle of career politicians and their media hangers on, acting like we just executed Charles I all over again. And the more, liberals insist on acting like they have a permanent mandate that elections only temporarily interrupt, the more they'll have to fear the mob showing up at their palace gates.