Just found this in an online encyclopedia:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In the context of the French Revolution, a Jacobin originally meant a member of the Jacobin Club (1789-1794). But even while the Club still existed, the name of Jacobins had been popularly applied to all promulgators of extreme revolutionary opinions. Nowadays, in France this term refers to a centralistic conception of Republic, with all powers concentrated in Paris.
In this sense the word passed beyond the borders of France and long survived the Revolution. Canning's paper, The Anti-Jacobin, directed against the English Radicals, consecrated its use in England; and in the correspondence of Metternich and other leaders of the repressive policy which followed the second fall of Napoleon in 1815, Jacobin is the term commonly applied to anyone with Liberal tendencies, even to so august a personage as the emperor Alexander I of Russia.
The English who supported the French Revolution during its early stages (or even throughout), were early known as Jacobins. These included the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and others prior to their disillusionment at the outbreak of The Terror. Others, such as William Hazlitt and Thomas Paine remained idealistic about the Revolution. Much detail on English Jacobinism is to be found in E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class.
The Anti-Jacobin was planned by George Canning when he was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He secured the collaboration of George Ellis, John Hookham Frere, William Gifford, and some others. William Gifford was appointed working editor. The first number appeared on November 20, 1797, with a notice that "the publication would be continued every Monday during the sitting of Parliament". A volume of the best pieces, entitled The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, was published in 1800. It is almost impossible to apportion accurately the various pieces to their respective authors, though more than one attempt has been made so to do.
Jacobinism is not related to Jacobitism or the English Jacobean period.
Thanks.
It just doesn't do any good to attempt to communicate in language that your intended audience doesn't understand. That's a very basic concept, and one that is lost on most columnists. They can use terms and concepts, and often do, that are unfamiliar to their audience. And I think they do this often to impart a sense of superiority.
I dunno. I think the goal of communication is to communicate to as wide an audience as possible. That doesn't mean that the words should be dumbed down. It means that the average person shouldn't be left wondering, "what the heck did he mean?".