Tocqueville also noted that this freedom is "dangerous." In Europe, crowds signaled revolt. American democracy had produced a paradox, one that had a subtle but profound national security dimension. Tocqueville concluded the "liberty of association" had become "a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority." Civil associations -- presumably even pillow fights -- facilitated political association, and free political association kept American democracy vibrant. Association was the "dangerous means" for thwarting the majority's "omnipotence."

Tocqueville's observations and San Francisco's impending trash-bred quash of flash mobs led me to the Internet. I typed in "flash mob" and "tea party." The Google search produced an article on "anti-stimulus" protests occurring throughout the United States. Scores of demonstrations against congressional "pork" spending, congressional "earmark" spending, lack of oversight in bailout spending and congressional corruption (Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is a particular target) have sprung up around the United States.

In some cases, several hundred people have gathered -- organized using "flash mob" communications techniques. The tea party protestors connect their contemporary gripes with the same anti-tax and anti-autocrat sentiment that spawned the Boston Tea Party of 1773. The Internet and cell phones are simply swifter couriers for delivering messages from bloggers and protest organizers, the rough contemporary equivalents of the "committees of correspondence" that linked American revolutionaries in the 18th century.

Yes, hyper-left San Francisco insists it has no ideological issues with flash mobs ... but tyrants do. In 2006, Zimbabwe's military cracked down on cell phone companies because they provide "independent connections" (i.e., communications) inside and outside the country. This threatened "national security." The military wanted to limit the outflow of information on Zimbabwe's terrible internal conditions and deny demonstrators a tool for organizing.

Tocqueville wrote: "It cannot be denied that the unrestrained liberty of association for political purposes is the privilege which a people is longest in learning how to exercise."

Americans, he concluded, had learned. The privilege, and its enabling knack, remains revolutionary.