The American Revolutions Series

The American Revolution Series is a four-part narrative in which I explain how Americans exercising their political right of Consent transformed their enlightened government “of, by, and for the people” into the hierarchical despotism Alexis de Tocqueville warned against in Book IV of Democracy in America.

I explain that each of the three revolutions I discuss in the series produced tools that an emerging aristocracy of benefactors used to subjugate the people they served. In the early and mid-20th century they invented faux Thomas Jefferson. In my third discussion, I trace how the nation’s managing directors refined this fictious character and used him to lead the American people to their Tocquevillean pasture.

I explain that each of revolution produced new political tools and methods, which their masterminds used to vanquish their enemies and consolidate their control of the American government. During the middle decades of the 20th century, the hierarchs who controlled the nation’s government transformed themselves into benefactors who took care of the American people. By giving people things on conditions they dictated, they transformed a nation of individual enterprisers into the flock Tocqueville described in 1840.