Below, Jonathan Turley shares five key insights from his new book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.
Jonathan is a professor at George Washington University Law School and litigator. He has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including representing members of Congress, judges, whistleblowers, five former Attorney Generals, celebrities, accused spies and terrorists, journalists, protesters, and the workers at the secret facility Area 51. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA TODAY. He has also worked as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and Fox.
What’s the big idea?
The American Revolution remains unfinished. The fragile experiment launched in 1776 now confronts transformative political, economic, and technological forces that raise urgent questions about the future of the Republic.
1. The American Revolution is unique because it did not ultimately consume itself.
“Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” Those words from journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan during the French Revolution referred to the Roman God Saturn, or Kronos in Greek.
The youngest son of twelve Titans, Kronos was given an ominous prophecy by his mother that he would be overthrown by his own child. That made for a less-than-ideal family. Kronos would castrate his father and, after ascending to the throne, he defied the prophecy by eating each of his children upon their birth. Not surprisingly, his familial diet did not sit well with his consort, Rhea. So when her son Zeus was born, she decided to trick Kronos by wrapping a stone in a swaddling blanket and handing it to him to devour. She then hid Zeus on Crete. Once he reached adulthood, Zeus returned and fulfilled the prophecy by defeating his father.
The story of Kronos held obvious meaning for Mallet du Pan, who watched with alarm as the French Revolution devoured first its aristocratic foes and then its own supporters. The lesson of Saturn would also be raised in the American Revolution by none other than Thomas Paine.
Kronos may have been all too human in allowing his ambition and rage to overwhelm every other emotion and consideration. He embodied an insatiable appetite that, once unleashed, would continue with inexorable and horrible consequences. It is a story played out time and again through history as ambition becomes activism, activism becomes extremism, and extremism becomes authoritarianism. Call it the Saturn gene. We are all Saturn’s children, with an inherent impulse that rests within each of us: the capacity of all mortals to become monsters.
The Framers, particularly James Madison, sought to control those monsters that lie within every republic to prevent democracy from becoming tyranny, including the tyranny of the majority or democratic despotism. They succeeded in creating the world’s oldest and most stable democracy, while just a few years later, the French Revolution would be the blood-soaked Terror.
2. The most revolutionary character of the American Revolution was Thomas Paine.
In an intriguing way, a new emerging people found the perfect embodiment in Thomas Paine—impatient, precocious, and unpredictable. He came to America to reinvent himself and found a nation looking for the very same thing.
He would become the voice not of the powdered and pampered class of armchair revolutionaries, but of the common man. More than any of his contemporaries, Paine understood this nation of immigrants—transplants, like himself, who were willing to break free of past constraints and concepts. This was a nation that had “now outgrown the state of infancy.”
“History has shown that it is far easier to start a revolution than it is to contain one.”
Before writing those words, Paine had tried and failed at a wide range of enterprises, from being a staymaker to a privateer to a tobacconist to an excise officer. He was never more than mediocre at any of these professions. The irony was that he stumbled from failure to failure without realizing that he was his own greatest asset.
What was in his head would make him an international sensation, but he would not understand that until he hit rock bottom and drifted onto these shores with the rest of the world’s flotsam and jetsam. While Paine seemed perfectly clueless in dealing with other humans, he had a brilliant conception of humanity.
His “Common Sense” was their sense of what was wrong with the world around them. Paine would also come to know that revolution, once unleashed, can develop an insatiable appetite. It is a lesson that is easily forgotten by people who have not known revolution for centuries. Radicals today espouse the same reckless demand for change “by any means necessary.” History has shown that it is far easier to start a revolution than it is to contain one.
Paine would discover that fact at great cost. He was the ultimate example of Saturn’s children. He would be devoured by revolution and then emerge with a new perspective on how revolutions are won and lost. If you want to understand the American Revolution—and all revolutions—you would be wise to start with Thomas Paine.
3. We are living through a crisis of faith.
In May 2024, I was working on this book when suddenly a mob outside was crying “Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!” Those words were not chanted on Place de la Concorde in Paris but on the quad of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. I was literally working on the material from the French Revolution when it seemed like the French Revolution had come to me.
Students were holding a mock trial of the university president, the provost, the board of directors, and others over their refusal to yield to demands in an anti-Israel protest. Encamped for weeks in the yard next to my law school office, the students chanted “off with their heads” and “off to the motherf*cking gallows with you.”
“We have survived every age of rage because of a constitutional system that was designed not for the good times but the bad times that come with democracy.”
No one seriously expected the tumbrels to roll down Pennsylvania Avenue. The students were venting and mocking the administration. Nevertheless, the faux trial induced a certain “what if” moment, considering whether we could ever actually devolve into such madness. It came at a time when protests are becoming more radicalized and, at times, violent.
We have survived every age of rage because of a constitutional system that was designed not for the good times but the bad times that come with democracy. Despite having the most successful and stable constitutional system in history, there is still that moment: a fleeting doubt as to whether the system could survive the morning, survive the times we are living in, survive us.
4. Robotics and AI could change not just our Republic but its citizens.
In his debut novel in 1952, Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. wrote of a dystopian world where automation replaces most workers. In one scene, machinist Rudy Hertz watches as a factory of hundreds of lathes repeats his every motion with unending, unfailing precision. His honor of being “chosen to have his motions immortalized on tape” was followed by all machinists, including himself, losing their jobs to their automated selves. Hertz had become the player piano of the labor force, the replicated human precursor to a new robotic workforce.
Hertz’s fate is now being realized by millions in a new emerging economy. With greater automation and AI technology, manufacturing and service jobs are likely to be reduced significantly. Some estimates put the loss of jobs at 80 percent, from healthcare to sales to agriculture to manufacturing.
The greatest threat of dependency policies is not just their impact on the economy but on the citizens themselves. Cradle-to-grave subsidies can change how citizens view their relationship with the government and their control over their own destiny. It can infantilize citizens’ minds, making them feel like dependents of the government.
The hold of subsistence subsidies can produce servile citizens who live from government paycheck to paycheck. Citizens will fight over a pie of benefits rather than try to expand that pie. Worse yet, it can create class stratification with a minority of productive citizens and a large population of dependent citizens.
“The greatest threat of dependency policies is not just their impact on the economy but on the citizens themselves.”
With subsidized housing, it can produce a society of not just economic but physical separation of classes in the United States. That type of dependency economy is perfect for the rise of despotic democratic impulse and the repetition of the historical cycle toward authoritarianism.
5. If we are to keep this Republic, we must keep faith with who we are as Americans.
The art of living freely in this still new 21st century is to seek creative solutions without losing the core elements that have allowed our constitutional system to thrive in ever-changing conditions. Ours remains a system designed for revolutionary change without devolving into actual revolution. The success of that system will require reinforcing rather than replacing those structural elements. We have to find Paine’s “happy something” that emerged on these shores over 250 years ago.
A Frenchman wrote a popular work in Europe that revealed the fascination with this new form of citizen. He asked, “What then is the new American, this new man?” The question today is even more poignant and perhaps, for some, more difficult to answer. The greatest challenge of this century may be a rediscovery of that essential character that seemed so clear to these early writers when they first came upon our shores. Call it a crisis of faith or a confusion of the times, but many seem unsure whether we represent something beyond the totality of our wealth or power. We were much more than that when we first assumed the moniker of Americans.
What are we now? What do we aspire to be in this new century? The answer is found at the moment of creation, when a people was defined by “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We are bound by the revolutionary idea that government exists to allow every citizen to pursue one’s own manifest destiny. As shown by shows, we are our own greatest creations. What was true in 1776 is true today: We remain revolutionary people.
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