Rage and the Republic
In the face of bourgeois Jacobin challenges, can the American experiment survive the 21st century?
This essay originally appeared in Law & Liberty on April 27, 2026 as “Mobocracy in America” (here). Thanks to Power Line, Real Clear Policy (here), and Real Clear Books!
To many Americans, Jonathan Turley is an avuncular commentator who appears frequently on Fox News and other media outlets to discuss legal issues, a role for which he is well-equipped as a long-time law professor at George Washington University in D.C. In fact, Turley is far more than a talking head or law professor. He is also an influential legal blogger (at his site, Res Ipsa Loquitur); a widely-cited legal scholar (including his 2024 book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage); a frequent witness in congressional proceedings; counsel in many civil rights, national security, and military law cases (in addition to heading George Washington’s Project for Older Prisoners, which he founded); and a highly-regarded public intellectual. In other words, Turley is a deep thinker. He is also a self-proclaimed classical liberal.
To the consternation of critics on the Left, Turley is the rare legal academic who has shifted rightward over the course of his career. Inside the Beltway, the ideological migration generally goes in the opposite direction. Turley’s latest book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, published in time to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, is possibly his most ambitious undertaking. Years in the making, it is not a legal work, per se. Rather, it is an expansive (and impressively-erudite) reflection on the tension between liberty and democracy, focusing on the dilemma of democratic self-government: A people’s struggle for freedom, often accompanied by revolution, in many cases leads to populist rage—mob rule—every bit as tyrannical as the authoritarian regime the people sought to escape. Populist rage—whether organic or synthetic–can exist on both the Left (e.g., Antifa, BLM, Students for Justice in Palestine, DSA) and the Right (e.g., militias, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Groypers).
Now, and throughout history, mob rule is dangerous because passion replaces reason, wild conspiracy theories are accepted as truth, blind obedience by the masses enables demagogues’ quest for power, and institutions designed to tame the foibles of human nature—such as separation of powers and the rule of law—are shredded when they are perceived to be “in the way” of objectives desired by the mob.
America has, at least so far, escaped the horrors unleashed by the French Revolution. But how? Turley frames the inquiry of Rage and the Republic as “how a fleeting combination of factors can prove the difference between a stable democracy and a brutal despotism.” Tumultuous change can roil the polity, particularly when widespread economic hardship results. Turley posits that globalized markets, robots, and artificial intelligence may transform life in the 21st century and provoke passions which undermine reason and lead to democratic despotism. Majoritarian excesses can be just as brutal as the reign of an autocratic dictator. Democracy can degenerate into what colonial physician Benjamin Rush called “mobocracy.” Turley’s wide-ranging ruminations on this topic include forays into Greek mythology, ancient Athens, political philosophy, world history, human nature, natural rights, and the genius of the Founding Fathers.
As a narrative device, Turley contrasts certain personalities (Thomas Paine versus James Madison), philosophies (that of John Locke versus Jean-Jacques Rousseau), and historical events and their aftermaths (the American Revolution versus the French Revolution), in the process synthesizing a broad and varied body of research complete with end notes and copious illustrations. The contrast between Philadelphia and Paris is vivid and unsettling. Our revolution, launched by the Declaration of Independence, led to “the miracle at Philadelphia” and an enduring constitutional republic; France’s blood-soaked counterpart, inspired by “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (“liberty, equality, fraternity”), saw many thousands of innocents slaughtered by guillotine in the Reign of Terror, and led to the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte.
American colonists were not totally immune to the passions that ran amok in France; prior to the insurrections known as Shays’s Rebellion (1786-87) and the Whiskey Rebellion (1791-94), in 1779 an angry mob attacked the home of James Wilson, a prominent founder who had signed the Declaration of Independence, and who would go on to serve as a delegate at the Constitutional Convention, sign the Constitution, and serve for nearly a decade as a Justice on the Supreme Court. The attack on his home in Philadelphia, leaving at least six dead, would become known as the Fort Wilson riot. After the British abandoned Philadelphia, the local revolutionary government targeted “loyalists” thought to have aided the British during their occupation of the city. Wilson, a prominent lawyer, represented some of the loyalists charged with treason, as John Adams had represented British soldiers tried in connection with the Boston Massacre in 1770.
Turley reports that “Wilson stood with other brave men of the bar in support of the rule of law at a time of mob justice and secured acquittals for many of the thirty-three alleged loyalists before the attack on his house.” An extra-legal mob whipped up by liquor and demagoguery attempted to lynch a signer of the Declaration, in the City of Brotherly Love! This was not a mere passing impulse or transitory mood in colonial America’s largest city. Eight years later, more riots would occur in Philadelphia when, in 1787, an anti-Federalist mob attacked crowds of pro-Constitution Federalists celebrating Pennsylvania’s ratification of the Constitution. Despite such incidents, no bloodbath comparable to the orgy of beheadings in France occurred in the newly-established United States.
What led to the different outcomes, and what are the lessons to be drawn? Turley explores the various factors at length in Part II of Rage and the Republic, in gruesome terrain drearily familiar to students of history. There were, of course, many cultural, religious, and economic differences between American colonists and French peasants in the 18th century. The French monarchy was far more oppressive than King George III, and the colonists were not burdened by a complicit aristocracy and clergy. These differences produced dramatically divergent sequels to the nations’ respective revolutions. In America, democratic passions were tamed by the Constitution’s carefully-designed (Madisonian) structure; in France, a unicameral legislature (as favored by Paine) and the absence of due process led to a grisly bloodlust of “righteous rage”—a “virtual death cult.” Ironically,Paine ended up imprisoned by the mob in France for 10 months and was lucky to survive with his head intact.
The lessons are a timely subject even in the 21st century as the United States faces unprecedented polarization fueled by populist sentiment on the Left and Right. Unless constrained, democracy leads to mob rule, and mobs are inherently dangerous. James Madison knew this, and at the Constitutional Convention in 1787—America’s true founding—and in his contributions to the Federalist Papers, Madison argued in favor of a bicameral legislature, a tripartite form of government with checks and balances, a strong executive, and an independent judiciary. In Turley’s telling, the mob behavior in Philadelphia ended following ratification of the Constitution because the disparate factions within the colonies “were beginning to resemble a nation; they were beginning to act as Americans invested in a single political system. It was the true end of the revolutionary period and the start of the constitutional period in the United States.” When citizens acceptthe legitimacyof a shared “political framework for their grievances,” unbridled passions are replaced with civic unity—E pluribus unum—and devotion to majoritarian compromise in pursuit of the common good.
After laying the philosophical and historical groundwork in Parts I and II, Turley devotes the bulk of his book to “Democracy in the Twenty-First Century and the ‘Art of Living Freely,’” in Part III. This is Turley’s prescription for preserving the American experiment. He states that “The art of living freely continues to be the greatest challenge of humanity. That challenge is likely to become even more daunting in this century.” While Turley is even-handed in his analysis, to this reader it appears that he expresses greater concern over threats from the Left. Mobs are fueled by rage, and currently the angriest political bloc in America is the Left. Turley begins Part III with imagery of campus protestors (at his own university!) chanting “Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!” in 2024 and indicts a noisy group of leftist intellectuals as “a rising class of American Jacobins, budding bourgeois revolutionaries striking out at the status quo and constitutional values.”
Turley identifies some of the Jacobins, including The Nation’s Elie Mystal, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.), James Carville, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and—sadly—prominent legal academics such as Harvard’s Mark Tushnet and UC Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky who condemn the Constitution and its processes in favor of smashmouth confrontations. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine publicly attacked a Republican nominee for subscribing to the central premise of the Declaration—that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights. Many liberals applauded (or condoned) the murders of healthcare executive Brian Thompson and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk—harbingers of what some have described as “assassination culture.” Turley warns that “there is a sense of a rising movement of the discontented who are dabbling in the rhetoric of revolution.” I recall none of this in 1976, when the nation celebrated the Bicentennial. Turley notes that “Many politicians have moved to the extreme left to ride the wave of activism and anger.”
Turley is equally concerned about the state of higher education, where the ingredients for populist rage abound: Class warfare, anti-Semitism, resort to propaganda, censorship to silence dissent, elevating abstract utopian ideals over unpleasant realities, ostracism of those who do not conform, calls for violent protest, etc. He observes that “Some of the most radical factions in our history have flourished in this echo-chamber environment, including Antifa.” Demagogues crave power, the pursuit of which often involves “convincing the public to give up constitutional protections.” This is why preserving the rule of law is so important, and why legal academics who denounce the Constitution are so dangerous. How can a law professor in good conscience condemn the Constitution and the rule of law?
The First Amendment safeguards the free exchange of ideas, but Turley bemoans the decline of objective journalism, which has contributed to the “exodus of viewers and readers toward new media and social media. The result is an information vacuum for the public at the very time that the country most needs reliable and respected news sources.” Instead, many people get their “news” from fringe podcasts, blogs, and content on X and TikTok. The legacy media played an ignoble role in covering up the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, President Biden’s mental decline, the origins of COVID-19, and other important news stories. Turley laments that “Advocacy journalism easily mutates into radical activism.”
How do we keep these forces from pushing America into the radical instability of a mobocracy? Turley offers three solutions: robust protection of individual rights, structural protections against the concentration of power, and accommodations for factional interests. As we learned, or should have learned, during the COVID-19 pandemic, due process and individual rights must not be sacrificed to achieve an uncertain measure of safety, security, or–in today’s woke world–“equity.” Constitutional protections—especially free speech and property rights–must be vigilantly enforced, not “reimagined” to facilitate short-term political objectives. Turley uses his familiarity with current activist “scholarship” in the legal academy to demonstrate the pressures being exerted on our constitutional order. “Packing” or otherwise transforming the Supreme Court for ideological reasons, once reviled as an extremist measure that sullied FDR’s reputation, is now avidly supported by progressive politicians and academics. Madison would be aghast.
The Declaration was accompanied, in 1776, by publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and Turley draws a close connection between political freedom and economic freedom. A sound economy produces abundance, which ameliorates populist dissatisfaction with the distribution of wealth and reduces the risk of citizens’ dependency on the government dole. This topic could have been spun off into a separate book, but Turley capably summarizes the salient points without digressing too far from his thesis. The thumbnail sketch of Louisiana Governor Huey Long is instructive; poverty fuels envy. Turley’s musings about automation and AI may prove to be speculative (or at least premature).
Turley’s final tonic to avert democratic despotism is to minimize the centralization of power in the national government by respecting federalism and states’ rights. He reflects that “Federalism allows for not just layers of division [of authority] but the maintenance of opposing thought centers outside the national government.” State autonomy barely survived the 16th and 17th amendments, and the obliteration of Commerce Clause constraints during the New Deal, but we need to foster federalism to the extent possible. “The reinforcement of federalism,” Turley reminds us, “remains one of the greatest bulwarks against an abusive national government.” Few readers will disagree with Turley’sconcern about the administrative state, transnational (or “global”) governance, and corporate feudalism.
It remains to be seen what “being an American” in the 21st century will look like. Certainly not the pastoral image featured in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Life is not static, and the rate of change in modern society grows ever faster. Can we maintain a common identity, and shared values, as a nation? Can Americans in red states coexist with their fellow citizens in blue states? Love of country, a desire to control one’s destiny and identity, and devotion to the constitutional order have allowed Americans to overcome many past challenges. In a poignant autobiographical coda, Turley shares his family’s story of upward mobility, from immigrants crossing the ocean in steerage, to working in coal mines, to starting businesses, to living in the projects, to pursuing successful careers through hard work and hope for a better life. Turley is living proof that the American dream works.
For the American experiment to survive the 21st century, Americans must remember what unites them: “It is the political and economic freedoms that allow every person to pursue their own destiny and identity….[I]n this country, you are your greatest creation.” Benjamin Franklin famously warned that our country is “A republic, if you can keep it.” This remains as true today as it was at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Rage and the Republic is a bracing read, chock full of inspiring and thought-provoking vignettes, and a timely reminder of what we celebrate on this, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration. It is a loving paean to America.
I recommend it enthusiastically.
