“This is time for a revolution… They can’t take us all down.” These words from Breaking Bad actor Giancarlo Esposito are being echoed by a growing number of armchair revolutionaries today. Revolution is once again in the air as we approach the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.
On Tuesday Simon & Schuster will release my book: “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution‘An exploration of the founding and future of our unique republic. It’s a book about revolutions and how they can consume those who started them. Both the American and French Revolutions emerged during the same period, but one became the world’s oldest democracy, while the other became a blood-soaked tyranny known as the Reign of Terror.
As I wrote the book, I was amazed at the comparisons between the conditions of the 18th century and those of today. The most telling moment came when I was working at my law school. This is how I describe it in my book:
“In May 2024, I was working on this book when I suddenly felt drawn into the pages of my research. A crowd outside shouted, ‘Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!’ Those words were not sung on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, but on the plaza of George Washington University Washington, DC I was literally working on material from the French Revolution when it seemed as if the French Revolution had come to me. Students held a mock trial of the university’s president, provost, board of trustees and others for their refusal to yield to the demands of an anti-Israel protest. Encamped for weeks in the courtyard next to my law school office, the students chanted “cut off their heads” and “take you to the gallows.”** … The mock trial created a certain “what if” moment, making us wonder if we could ever actually descend into such madness. It came at a time when protests are becoming increasingly radical and sometimes violent. Despite having the most successful and stable constitutional system in history, there is still that moment: a fleeting doubt whether the system could survive the morning, the times we live in, and survive us.”
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The book examines whether the American republic can survive the 21st century amid challenges ranging from robotics and artificial intelligence to global governance systems. It discusses the rise of the ‘new Jacobins’ – politicians, professors and pundits calling for the destruction of the Constitution and radical change in the United States.
The original Jacobins were also journalists, professors and politicians who joined the crowd in their efforts to tear down the existing government structure. Today we hear many of the same voices. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, is the author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
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Newspapers such as The New York Times regularly publish opinion articles with calls to destroy the Constitution or restrict rights such as freedom of expression. In one such column, “The Constitution is Broken and Must Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called on the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Another mocked “Constitution worship,” warning that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we should be saved from it.’
The Constitution of the United States and the gavel with brass ring. (spxChrome)
Republicans and law enforcement officials are now regularly called “Nazis” and “fascists” by Democratic leaders. Some promise arrests, ranging from the president to individual police officers. Last week, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner promised he would “hunt down” ICE officers like “Nazis.” Democratic strategist James Carville previously threatened that “collaborators” would be treated the same way they were treated after World War II.
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Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz has called ICE officers “Gestapo,” saying this could be our “Fort Sumter” moment — an event that sparked a civil war that left hundreds of thousands of Americans dead.
The dehumanization of political opponents gives people permission for extreme or even violent reactions. In cities like Minnesota, protesters carried signs that read “Kill Nazis,” and we’ve seen assassination attempts on President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Many celebrated or rationalized the murder of Charlie Kirk. A quarter of Americans now believe that political violence is justified.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the Capitol in Washington, DC on February 5, 2019. (Doug Mills/Pool via REUTERS)
At the same time, violent figures are celebrated. After Luigi Mangione was charged with allegedly shooting United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024, some cheered, and others, like former Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz, cheered. She explained the reaction of many women: “Here is a man who is a revolutionary, who is famous, who is handsome, who is young, who is smart. He is someone who seems like a morally good man, which is hard to find.”
Sure, he’s some kind of Thomas Paine with a six-pack and a 3D-printed ghost gun.
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Even as guillotines regularly appear at protests, no one expects the tumbrels to roll down Pennsylvania Avenue. Figures like Robespierre, however, started out as lawyers advocating due process and human rights before becoming the architects of terror. He would eventually declare that “Terror is only justice: swift, severe and unyielding; it is then an expression of virtue.”
A protester attacks a police officer with a skateboard during a “National Shutdown” protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles on January 30, 2026. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
The greatest danger the Framers saw in our new republic was the danger of democratic despotism – the tyranny of a majority that knows no limits to its power. They tried to avoid the fate of democracies like Athens, which ultimately gave rise to tyranny.
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During the French Revolution, writer Jacques Mallet du Pan noted that “like Saturn, the revolution devours its children.” That insatiable hunger has been taking its toll for centuries. The Jacobins who came to power during the French Revolution would ultimately fall victim to the ‘razor of the republic’.
The focus of the American Revolution was freedom, not democracy. It was the first revolution of the Enlightenment, based on the natural rights of all humanity. The Founders saw direct democracy as leading to what one of them called a “mobocracy.”
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Strikingly, many of the new Jacobins today are trying to strip away the protections created to limit public momentum. They are trying to persuade the Supreme Court and change the constitutional structure to allow radical changes. Years ago, Harvard law professor Michael Klarman, after laying out a radical agenda to guarantee that Republicans will “never win another election,” warned that they must first take control of the judiciary because “the Supreme Court could overturn everything I just described.”
We’ve been here before. My new book, “Anger and the Republic‘ tells this American story through the life of one of the two figures who played a key role in both the American and French revolutions: Thomas Paine. (The other was the Marquis de Lafayette.) Paine opposed many of Madison’s “precautions.”
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History shows that it is much easier to start a revolution than to end one. As politicians fuel the crowds in big cities, they will likely discover that today’s revolutionaries often become tomorrow’s reactionaries.
At the turn of the 19th century, one of the few leaders to survive was Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, considered the Thomas Paine of the French Revolution. When asked what he had done during the revolution, the old abbot pondered the question and replied simply: “J’ai vécu” (“I survived”).
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