grounds of misconduct and to form a government fornthemselves.nBurke tells his French correspondent that in their revolutionnthey had had the chance of reforming a somewhatndilapidated constitution. All the necessary elements werenpresent: “In your old states you possessed that variety ofnparts corresponding with the various descriptions of whichnyour community was happily disposed; you had all thatncombination and all that opposition of interests, you had thatnaction and counteraction, which, in the natural and in thenpolitical world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordantnpowers draws out the harmony of the universe.”nIt does not take a doctrinaire Burkean to recognize thatnhis brief passage contains more political prudence than cannbe found in most of even the best books of politicalnsociology. What Burke knew — and radical democrats apparentlyndo not know — is that the complexities and intricaciesnof human social arrangements cannot be reduced to thenmoronic formulas of majoritarian rule. Otherwise, thenpeople of Brooklyn will overtax Staten Island to the pointnthat its citizens will either rebel or depart. The dark-hairednwill discriminate against the fair; men of affluent andnmoderate means will consign the poor to poverty andndespair. North will oppress South; Protestants persecutenCatholics; hypocrites bully nonbelievers. This defect innmajority rule has been well understood in America since thentime of John C. Calhoun, and it has received seriousnattention from more recent political thinkers as JosephnSchumpeter and James Fishkin.nIronically, many American journalists who pretend tonrepudiate the bloody deeds of the French Revolutionnsupport nearly all of its basic principles, including thosentenets that J.L. Talmon summed up in the phrase “TotalitariannDemocracy.” In the name of majority rule and thenprinciple of one-man one-vote, enlightened and virtuousnleaders like Robespierre, Babeuf, Franklin Roosevelt, andndeputy secretaries at the Department of Education willnundertake to guide the national destiny until the day arrivesnwhen the indoctrination of the masses will have renderednthem sufficiently pliable. It is the Western version of thendictatorship of the proletariat and the state that simplynrefuses to wither away.nI have yet to meet one of these great democrats who didnnot recoil in fear and loathing from ordinary Americans, andnI have yet to read one of their celebrations of democracy thatnincluded anything like a working definition that could benapplied to real political situations. They are no less willing,nhowever, to call for global democratic revolution in accentsnthat would have warmed the hearts of the Jacobins.nBoth the Americans and the French were pleased tondescribe the respective regimes of George III and LouisnXVI as tyrannies and grounded their rebellion on the rightnto resist despotism. But while the French eventually came tonbase their claims on a theory of radical democracy, fewnAmerican “patriots” could stomach the word. The exceptionnthat proves the rule is Thomas Jefferson. Jeffersonnclaimed to be a democrat, but what he understood byndemocracy was a broad franchise that included the responsiblenelements of society, a severely limited national government,nand vigorous state and local governments. He, farnmore than Hamilton, was the quintessential federalist.nHow does a rebel know if his cause is just? Burke thoughtnthat “the speculative line of demarcation, where obediencenought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure,nand not easily definable.” If Burke had been a politicalnphilosopher, he might have undertaken such an exercise inndefinition. As it is, few philosophers have done much better.nSince Herodotus, writers on the subject (notably, Aristotle)nhave been content to draw up a list of the despicable acts innwhich tyrants engage: they deprive citizens of their liberties,nmake war on the virtuous and well-to-do (remember, thenFrench Revolution began as a revolt of the nobles and thenbourgeoisie), commit sexual excesses, trample upon traditions.nThis tradition was echoed, to a very great extent, innthe complaints directed against Louis XVI.nTheorists writing in a more theological vein would saynthat tyrants are rulers that systematically violate natural law,nand that is as good a way as any of characterizing thenexcesses of Hitler and Stalin. But a religious treatment ofnpolitical questions will hardly do for a pluralist society likenthe US, and so much of natural law theory is entirelynspeculative that it hardly gives grounds for action in concretencircumstances. The cavalier manner in which anti-abortionnprotesters invoke natural law as justification for their lawbreakingnis a further indication of its inutility.nBut even supposing that we agreed to define a tyrant as anruler (or ruling class) that murdered the innocent, severednthe bonds between parents and children, and deprivednpeople of the fruits of their labor, we should still face theninevitable problem of how to go about overturning such anregime without at the same time undermining the foundationsnof law and order.nWhatever the sins of Louis XVI, it can hardly be saidneither that he waged systematic war against natural law ornthat his successors were not a great deal guiltier than he onnevery count of the indictment drawn up against thenBourbons. There are other causes for the instability ofnFrench politics for the past two hundred years, but one ofnthem, surely, was the disorderly manner in which they wentnabout the business of revolution. Highly irregular.nOur own ancestors, while they occasionally indulgednthemselves in the rhetoric of natural rights, went aboutntheir revolution — if it may be so called — in quite a differentnmanner. In the first place, there was no American Revolutionnper se. As M.E. Bradford has shown convincingly,nthere were 13 separate revolutions, each with its ownncharacter and leaders. This fact—and it is a fact—hasnserious consequences that go beyond the question ofnwhether the American Revolution was liberal or conservative.n”When in the course of human events, it becomesnnecessary for one people to dissolve the political bands thatnhave connected them with another . . .” How often wenrecite the first clause of the Declaration, without realizingnthat it constitutes a denial of all the ideological interpretationsnof the Revolution. Here was no repudiation of anregime, but a separation of one people from another. If ournrevolution had been engineered by a cabal of individuals innPhiladelphia, claiming to speak on behalf of the individualncitizens of British America, we should have ended upnnnJUNE 1989/11n