About this episode

The episode discusses the threats to democracy posed by mob rule and the historical context of the American and French revolutions.

The problem for democracies throughout the ages has always been the rage and impatience of mobs with any limits on their power to act on their impulses. According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, such movements have become a major factor driving not just divisive politics and threats to liberty but also antisemitism. He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by law professor, Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, author of the new book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution. Turley traces the history of this potent threat to freedom by discussing both the American and French revolutions and how they differed. His hero is Thomas Paine, the author of pamphlets and books that inspired both world events but who has been shunted to the side by many historians. The problem that undermines all attempts at government by consent of the governed is when crowds of people, inflamed by the passions of the moment, seek direct democracy without limits. As history teaches us, Turley explains, that usually leads to violence and the end of freedom. The one example where that was avoided was the American experiment because of the adoption of a…

More episodes of Think Twice with Jonathan Tobin

• Ep. 221: To resist antisemitism, today’s Jews must become refuseniks · May 28, 2026 · 57 min
• Ep. 219: Can Israel Beat the World’s Biggest Smear Campaign? · May 15, 2026 · 1h 9m

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