July 14 was Bastille Day, which although it is still celebrated in France, is not what it’s cracked up to be. From Ann Coulter at anncoulter.com:
This Tuesday, the French celebrated Bastille Day, the mob attack on a Parisian prison that has come to symbolize the French Revolution, a period of massive violence that produced nothing other than a lot of dead Frenchmen. Their revolution was the screech of a mob, much as we are seeing in several of our own cities and towns today. So let’s review this absurdly celebrated event.
As is common with mob violence the storming of the Bastille was set off by a rumor. People began to whisper that the impotent, indecisive king, Louis XVI, was going to attack the new legislative body, the National Assembly.
— Hands Up! Don’t Shoot! (Even Eric Holder’s Justice Department found that claim was a lie — after multiple millions in property damage and human suffering.)
— Mass protests over police killing an innocent black man in Detroit! (Turns out, Hakim Littleton was firing a gun at them.)
— Althea Bernstein’s face was burned with lighter fluid and a match thrown at her by four “classic Wisconsin frat boys“! ((After initial flood-the-zone coverage, that story sure disappeared fast.)
In need of weapons to defend themselves from the imaginary attack, on the morning of July 14, 1789, about 60,000 French citizens armed with pikes and axes assembled at Les Invalides, a barracks for aging soldiers, to demand weapons and ammunition.
