HeavenlyPossum on Nostr: Then you should abandon this idea that democracy and freedom entail The Mob, because ...
Then you should abandon this idea that democracy and freedom entail The Mob, because that’s aristocratic propaganda with no relationship to reality.
The excesses of the French Revolution didn’t happen in a vacuum. They were a reaction to *centuries* of constant, grinding violence by the aristocracy—barely 2% of the population—against the peasantry. *For centuries* it was peasants’ little boys who were tortured because of who their dead parents were. Reactionaries have relied *for centuries* on the myth that the revolution was an explosion of populist chaos against a stable, peaceful status quo. It wasn’t.
Hamilton did not say that he was opposed to “populism.” He said *democracy.* Hamilton, Madison, and other aristocratic founders were consistently and explicitly opposed to the idea of democracy, in the sense of people having a say over common affairs. They were *explicit* about their fears that the poor majority would—peacefully and democratically—vote aristocratic property owners like them out of their expropriated wealth and enclosed property.
You don’t need to put words in their mouths to make their propaganda case for them. People do not need to be constrained by undemocratic elites to prevent violence against those elites.
The excesses of the French Revolution didn’t happen in a vacuum. They were a reaction to *centuries* of constant, grinding violence by the aristocracy—barely 2% of the population—against the peasantry. *For centuries* it was peasants’ little boys who were tortured because of who their dead parents were. Reactionaries have relied *for centuries* on the myth that the revolution was an explosion of populist chaos against a stable, peaceful status quo. It wasn’t.
Hamilton did not say that he was opposed to “populism.” He said *democracy.* Hamilton, Madison, and other aristocratic founders were consistently and explicitly opposed to the idea of democracy, in the sense of people having a say over common affairs. They were *explicit* about their fears that the poor majority would—peacefully and democratically—vote aristocratic property owners like them out of their expropriated wealth and enclosed property.
You don’t need to put words in their mouths to make their propaganda case for them. People do not need to be constrained by undemocratic elites to prevent violence against those elites.