The First Revolutions in the Minds of the People

The First Revolutions in the Minds of the People is the first in a four-book series about revolutions in America. Author James Thomson explains in the series how three American revolutions-helped along by faux Thomas Jefferson-undermined the nation's majoritarian political system. ** In The First Revolutions, Thompson explains that Sam Adams used a method pioneered by English placeman John Wilkes. Wilkes applied his method of speaking in "the voice of the people" to win a place for...
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The First Revolutions in the Minds of the People is the first in a four-book series about revolutions in America. Author James Thomson explains in the series how three American revolutions-helped along by faux Thomas Jefferson-undermined the nation's majoritarian political system. ** In The First Revolutions, Thompson explains that Sam Adams used a method pioneered by English placeman John Wilkes. Wilkes applied his method of speaking in "the voice of the people" to win a place for himself in England's haughty aristocracy. Adams used Wilkes's rights rhetoric to persuade King George III's American subjects that they were being enslaved by a monarchical tyrant. The great majority of American colonials did not endorse this charge, so, Thompson explains, Adams's "violent party" used intimidation to take control of the county and launch the first American Revolution. ** In The Second American Revolution, Thompson reconstructs Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's insurgency against Alexander Hamilton's federalist system. After Jefferson defeated Aaron Burr and became the nation's third President, political candidates everywhere adopted Jefferson's adversarial political method. The social divisions and regional animosities it produced grew so deep that in 1861 the union dissolved, and a bloody civil war was needed to restore it. ** The series' third book is Faux Thomas Jefferson. Here Thompson explains how an emerging political-historical complex transformed the "real" Thomas Jefferson, who was an avowed enemy of hierarchical tyranny, into an iconic bellwether for benevolent government. ** In The Third American Revolution, Thompson reconstructs the revolution President Franklin Roosevelt launched during the Depression. Operating in the shadow cast by faux Thomas Jefferson, Roosevelt's New Dealers established government by experts. In the ensuing decades, a network of power-hungry and increasingly corrupt bureaucrats gathered political power that originally belonged to the people into their own hands. Thompson reconstructs this hazy usurpation with Alexis de Tocqueville in mind. In 1840, Tocqueville predicted that a faceless hierarchy would implement a tyranny of benevolence and transform the American people into a docile, manageable herd. Thompson's sweeping narratives explain how this came to be, how democracy in America produced a "stupefied people" controlled by "good shepherds."