The problem for democracies throughout the ages has always been the rage and impatience of mobs with any limits on their power to act on their impulses. According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, such movements have become a major factor driving not just divisive politics and threats to liberty but also antisemitism.
He’s joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by law professor, Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, and author of the new book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution. Turley traces the history of this potent threat to freedom by discussing the American and French revolutions, and how they differed. His hero is Thomas Paine, the author of pamphlets and books that inspired both world events, but who has been shunted to the side by many historians.
The problem that undermines all attempts at government by consent of the governed is when crowds of people—inflamed by the passions of the moment—seek direct democracy without limits.
As history teaches, Turley explains, that usually leads to violence and the end of freedom. The one example where that was avoided was the American experiment, due to the adoption of a Constitution that created checks and balances that spoke to the founders’ fears of mob rule. That didn’t happen in France, and that’s why their revolution failed.
While the American system has worked well for 250 years, threats to its survival are real. Chief among them, Turley says, are what he calls the new Jacobins: politicians, professors and journalists who want to “reform” or trash the Constitution so they can enact radical change that is antithetical to freedom. The same factors, he says, are behind the current surge in the violent hatred of Jews.
Turley asserts that such rage is corruptive, addictive and contagious. Revolutions, like the mythical story of Saturn, eat their children. Antisemitism is one of those forms of rage. It has that sort of release for some people. It leads inevitably to violence, such as the attacks on Jews, as well as the murder of conservative voice Charlie Kirk, co‑founder of Turning Point USA, and the assassination attempts on U.S. President Donald Trump.
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