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“I Hold It That A Little Rebellion Now And Then Is A Good Thing”

2022 01 06 07 26

“This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable,” Jefferson wrote, “but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments.” He didn’t approve of the insurrection, but he feared how the authorities might respond. “Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them,” a fact that “should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much.”

Were insurrections like this one a threat to democracy? No, they were a concomitant of democracy. Jefferson believed that a government “wherein the will of every one has a just influence” was subject to certain unavoidable evils, “the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject.” And yet “Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs.” A small-time insurrection now and again “is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

Jefferson stood in a long tradition of both supporters and opponents of democracy who understood it in this light. Popular government is tumultuous government, not the sterile, clinically administered thing of today’s democracy-from-above idealists. To be sure, Jefferson’s taste for tumult was stronger than that of most people even in his own time. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem, he wrote to Madison: “I prefer a dangerous freedom to tranquil servitude.”

Daniel McCarthy At The Spectator more here

 

 

Listeners Love Kyle Anzalone’s Conflicts of Interest

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Hi,

I just wanted to say that I am amazed by your COI podcast; I never found any other podcast as informative as yours without political or social instrumentalization. Thank you so much for your work. I wish I could be involved one day.

I was in Tigray last summer, and I listened to your podcast, which was the most accurate for people who were not on the ground, and I was impressed. I am now heading to Sana’a in a week, and I am grateful for all your updates about Yemen. If you have other trustworthy sources of information that you could share with me about Yemen, please let me know.

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Pete Quiñones is Leaving the Institute

As some of you may have already learned, managing editor Pete Quiñones will be leaving the Institute on December 31st.

Personally, I still love the guy and plan on remaining good friends.

(And for the record, I do not blame him for the recent doxing of a couple of our fellow libertarians. He denied involvement to me and I believe him. So this is not due directly to that.)

It’s only that lately our paths are diverging and it’s better for all involved if we go our own directions without the dissonance or contradictions involved in staying professionally connected in this way.

We all wish Pete the best. I am certainly confident that his show will remain a great success and that his career will only prosper from here.

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