Has the revolution started?

At Belmont Club, Richard Fernandez takes a look back two centuries and finds a surprising fact. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both as involved in the American Revolution as anyone, were unsure years later about its real history.

Jefferson wrote: "On the subject of the history of the American revolution, you ask Who shall write it? Who can write it? And who ever will be able to write it? Nobody; except merely its external facts. All its councils, designs and discussions, having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no member, as far as I know, having even made notes of them, these, which are the life and soul of history must be forever unknown."

Adams wrote that the Revolutionary War was an effect of the true revolution, which had its genesis in individuals' minds, "in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington."

Their views, and especially that of Adams, might once again be relevant.

The Left has triumphed and seems impregnable. It has captured the presidency, Congress, the judiciary, the media, the educational Establishment. On the surface, it's all over for the United States as a constitutional republic. Hello, European bureaucratic-socialist directorship.

But the age of revolutions is never over. Another is brewing, against the statist conquest. If it is true, as Bismarck supposedly said, that a special Providence watches over children, drunkards, and the United States, the coming revolution will be accomplished without bloodshed.

Great changes are not always obvious when they are happening. William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, wrote that the phenomenon of conversion seemed in many cases to have been latent or unconscious for years. The individual concerned may have been completely unaware of it. Then, some incident or just an internal ripening caused the religious impulse suddenly to surface and overwhelm the person.

If America is turning a corner — undergoing a conversion, so to speak — it need not be signaled only by a few dramatic events. It is more likely to be hinted at in hundreds or thousands of data points, individually not all that striking, but indicative of forces gathering strength.

I'll just list a few instances that suggest the coming change of heart. In considering these, recall the 1990s, when it seems to me political correctness was at its height, accepted as right and inevitable in the mainstream media, and those in opposition were cowed and voiceless. Would this have happened?

Black corruptocrats Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters losing the support of their fellow Democrats, despite being in a "protected class."

More data points: would the mass media in the '90s have dreamed of publishing stories like these?

Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Can the U.S. Justice Department get any more politicized? Well, yes, it probably can. And over the next couple of years, it probably will. Though presidential administrations come and go, the Civil Rights Division of our Justice Department remains a reliably strong arm of the Democratic Party. And with a radical-left administration in place, that arm is getting all kinds of exercise."

The Telegraph: "The last few weeks have been a nightmare for President Obama, in a summer of discontent in the United States which has deeply unsettled the ruling liberal elites, so much so that even the Left has begun to turn against the White House."

US News & World Report: "There they go again. For the fifth time since July, the first family has set plans to board Air Force One for a frilly vacation, a 10-day return trip to exclusive Martha's Vineyard where they are expected to stay at the 28-acre oceanfront Blue Heron Farm that rents for up to $50,000 a week."

New York Daily News: "When images of Jean Paul Gaultier-clad First Lady Michelle Obama on a $75,000-a-day Spanish holiday hit the wires, controversy was bound to erupt back home. Her carefully crafted image as "everywoman" was blown. In addition to the high cost, the evolving justifications for the trip offered by the White House's flack were just as dizzying. First it was a private, mother-daughter trip that press secretary Robert Gibbs refused to comment on. Then, the White House said she was paying for most of the trip, but that the taxpayers would pay for some of it because she'd be meeting with the King and Queen of Spain."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Thirty thousand people showed up to receive Section 8 housing applications in East Point Wednesday, suffering through hours in the hot sun, angry flare-ups in the crowd and lots of frustration and confusion for a chance to receive a government-subsidized apartment.The massive event sometimes descended into a chaotic mob scene filled with anger and impatience."

Wall Street Journal: "One in 12 babies born in the U.S. in 2008 were offspring of illegal immigrants, according to a new study, an estimate that could inflame the debate over birthright citizenship. Undocumented immigrants make up slightly more than 4% of the U.S. adult population. However, their babies represented twice that share, or 8%, of all births on U.S. soil in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center's report."

Note that these are mainstream publications, not blogs. Most are liberal-to-leftist; the Wall Street Journal is notoriously pro-immigration. Their owners and editors, who "believe" whatever resonates with their readers and the Zeitgeist, have delicate antennae to detect shifts of opinion. And it doesn't take a wild flight of imagination to suspect that they are beginning to sense what is on the way, like pets getting agitated in the days before an earthquake.

It's been a long time since America has experienced a socio-political earthquake. One is overdue.