What Would The Founders Think? review ‘Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers’

What Would The Founders Think? posted a great review/summary of my new book, Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers: The Fight for Control of the American Revolution.

Michael Newton’s latest book, Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers, is a densely packed, meticulously researched, compendium of  historical knowledge.  Newton has done a great job assembling a formidable bibliography1 of both original sources and the works of respected historians, synthesizing them into an exposition of the forces responsible for the American experiment.

Newton documents the disparate roles played by “angry mobs” and by “Founding Fathers.”  These two forces were not always in sync with one another.  At times the irascible mobs were in control, and the aristocratic Founders struggled to reign them in, guide their passions, or even just keep up.  At other times, like during the period of Constitutional Convention, it was the Founders who struggled to convince the masses of the efficacy of their plans.

Read more…

Another trailer for The Path to Tyranny

The Path to Tyranny book trailer

A roundup of reviews: ‘Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers’ and ‘The Path to Tyranny’

In the past two weeks, my books have received a number of positive reviews. Here’s a roundup:

Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers

Very Educational and Entertaining read

I picked up Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers as I had read Michael Newton’s previous book The Path to Tyranny: A History of Free Society’s Descent into Tyranny and really enjoyed it. His new book lives up to the same quality as the previous one and I would highly recommend both to anybody.

The book covers the social side of the American revolution and covered aspects of the whole thing that I was largely unaware of. The American revolution is often compared to the French revolution, with the American revolution being seen as the thinking mans revolution and the French revolution as the revolution of the mob. It was fascinating to see how close the grand American experiment came to becoming just another “also ran” mob based revolution and how the genius of the founding fathers prevented it descending into one.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough as a behind the scenes look at a time in history that came perilously close to going off the rails.

Superb Analysis, Enlightening!

This book provides excellent analysis of the founding of our nation. There is enough history to keep the story flowing, but the span of years involved could not possibly be covered in depth as pure history…the genius of this book is the political and economic and governmental/legal analysis. The author describes the angry mobs of our American Revolution, the leadership of the Founding Fathers, the course of the Revolutionary War (with a number of surprising facts accompanying the analysis), the weakness of the Articles of Confederation, the forming of our Constitution (and the author ducks no thorny subjects, for example there is extensive analysis of slavery), and the early years of the fledgling Republic. Many of the financial issues (central Bank, taxation, size and scope of government) are a “distant mirror” (to borrow Barbara Tuchman’s phrase) of our times. The analysis is crisp, thorough, and based on the evidence. The bottom line comes from Hamilton: “Liberty without government leads to anarchy while government without liberty leads to tyranny.”

Michael E. Newton has done it again.

Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers: The Fight for Control of the American Revolution is chock full of interesting facts, startling patterns, and answers to questions that were never raised in my social studies classes. Who knew that all of the colonists weren’t English? How could I have studied the revolution and never heard the name Apollos Rivoire? Of course western expansion needed the railroads to be developed first. Why didn’t anybody ever tell me that before?

If today’s Tea Party, by virtue of its very name, is a throwback to the angry mobs of yesteryear, who are the people who will step up to be our new founding fathers?

The angry mobs brought us a revolution. The founding fathers developed the miracle of our Constitution, to prevent that revolution from descending into chaos, anarchy and tyranny.

Michael E. Newton presents the American revolution and the twists and turns of the first decades of our country in a book that is readable and enjoyable, one that I wish I could have read years ago.

The Path to Tyranny

Past Futures by Ana the Imp

The Path to Tyranny is a lucid and compelling treatment of an important subject, one that should be of interest to all who value liberty… An important book that really does speak to the times, a book that holds up a Janus-like mirror to the present, showing past futures.

Read the whole lengthy review…

Counter Argument

This book was disturbingly amazing in its review of historical events. It is well cited and developed and even though the author writes from his own political perspective not even the most hardened leftist could argue the historical data presented in this book. That by itself is the most disturbing aspect of it. I can only hope that more and more Americans read this book and discover the path we are truly teetering on.

Be Very Afraid

Michael E. Newton’s THE PATH TO TYRANNY is a compressed and incredibly well-written and researched book. Let me warn you: it is more frightening than a Stephen King novel. Mr. Newton analyzes ancient and recent societies, explaining how they came about, how they prospered, and how they descended into totalitarianism and disappeared. Newton’s account of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire alone is worth the price of admission. The amount of facts and history he crams into the chapter is impressive. Same goes for Russia’s wild ride from absolute monarchs through revolution then communism, and Germany’s path from defeat in WWI through hyperinflation and the hapless Weimar Republic to Adolf Hitler.

By far the scariest, though, is Chapter 8: The United States of America. The parallels Newton draws from previous civilizations descending into oppressive autocracies to the path of the present day U.S. is frightening. Before they cratered, all the societies followed the same pattern: villification of the successful and redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation; expansion of government and bureaucracy; the rise of an exalted political class; promotion of pure democracy over the principles of a republic; the emergence of one person, a dictator or tyrant who crushes freedom and liberty with the promise to return the crumbling society to its former glory. Mr. Newton’s succinct final chapter about the U.S. includes a sub-chapter about the complexity of federal laws, which now include over 4,000 crimes defined and buried deep in the federal register, unknown to anyone until nabbed by a federal toady who cries “gotcha.” The sub-chapter is entitled “We Are All Criminals Now.” Bravo Michael E. Newton. Please tell us more.

Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers is now available!

I am proud to announce that Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers: The Fight for Control of the American Revolution is now available for sale at numerous online stores, including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Additionally, Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers is also available on Kindle.

If you would like a preview, you can read a portion of the book and search through it over at Google Books. (Amazon’s Look Inside feature should be enabled shortly).

Angry mobs launched the American Revolution when they protested against British acts of tyranny. These rebels threatened, harassed, and chased away British officials and Loyalists. The Founding Fathers agreed with the goals of these Patriots, but not with their methods. Fearing anarchy, the Founders channeled the passions of the mobs toward independence.

Working together, the angry mobs and Founding Fathers defeated the mighty British army and won independence, but the new nation that emerged was anarchic and chaotic, much like the angry mobs themselves. Meeting behind closed doors, the Founding Fathers conspired to depose the Confederation government, wrote a new constitution, and created the world’s most successful republic.

‘Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers’ tells the little-known story of how these two groups fought for control of the American Revolution.

New cover for Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers

Coming this summer! Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers: The Fight for Control of the American Revolution

Introducing to you my newest book, coming out this summer:

Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers:
The Fight for Control of the American Revolution

Angry mobs launched the American Revolution when they protested against British acts of tyranny. These rebels threatened, harassed, and chased away British officials and Loyalists. The Founding Fathers agreed with the goals of these Patriots, but not with their methods. Fearing anarchy, the Founders channeled the passions of the mobs toward independence. Working together, the angry mobs and Founding Fathers defeated the mighty British army and won independence, but the new nation that emerged was anarchic and chaotic, much like the angry mobs themselves. Meeting behind closed doors, the Founding Fathers conspired to depose the Confederation government, wrote a new constitution, and created the world’s most successful republic. Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers tells the little-known story of how these two groups fought for control of the American Revolution.

* Details subject to change prior to publication.

New website. To announce new book on May 2.

Been very busy over here at ThePathToTyranny working on my new website. MichaelENewton.com is now up and running and ready for expansion. I will still be blogging here at thepathtotyranny.wordpress.com, so no need to change your bookmarks of subscription if you follow me here.

On that note, I will be announcing my new book on Monday May 2 at noon Eastern time (plus or minus a few minutes). As I’ve mentioned many times, this new book will be about the competing ideologies of the American Revolution. God willing, the book will be out this July (or maybe early August).

So watch your email, facebook, twitter, or my new website on May 2 for details on my upcoming book.

Most popular quotes from The Path to Tyranny

Amazon’s Kindle has a cool feature that enables readers to highlight passages. Amazon is then able to record this and show the most popular passages from the book. Here are most popular highlights from the Kindle version of The Path to Tyranny:

Aristotle calls democracy a perversion of constitutional government in the interest of the needy.

In 1914, John Basil Barnhill said in a debate about socialism, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.”[†]

politicians promise the right to high quality education, the right to free or affordable health care and housing, and many more so-called rights. These are not genuine rights. They are benefits at the expense of others. The rights to private property, free speech, and freedom of religion are true rights because they have no cost.

Choosing an absolute ruler and the organizational skills of a large government is often advantageous in a time of crisis, but the difficult part is rolling back the large government and tyranny after the emergency has ended, which Athens was unable to do.

Therefore, the best way to prevent invasion and coup is to maintain a small and decentralized government with a strong defense, a well-armed population, and the courage to defend one’s rights and liberty.

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek historian Polybius warned that “democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence” as the people grow more “accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others.”[14]

A drawback of large government with control over people’s lives is that it attracts ruthless men of ambition who wish to use the power of government for their own benefit.

Nevertheless, this use of government power to direct or coordinate society is a form of tyranny, because there can be no greater tyranny than an individual or group controlling the lives of an entire population, even if popularly elected.

The senators had hoped that killing Caesar would solve Rome’s problems, but the problem was not just Caesar the dictator, it was also the people’s desire to use government as a tool to redistribute land and wealth.

The tyrant also builds grand public works, acting as if he is helping the people, but his real goal is to impoverish them and keep them occupied.

 

FuturePundit asks: “Why Not Philanthropic Book Buying?”

FuturePundit writes:

Say you are reading a book you really like and want others to read it too. Maybe you just one certain friend to read it. Maybe you want to try to influence millions of people you do not even know. Or somewhere in between. It should be possible to easily buy restricted or unrestricted book distribution rights.

For example, imagine some wealthy guy with an interest in some policy area, someone who already might now be donating to think tanks like, say, the Manhattan Institute (and I happen to know such people in that specific case). They come across a book that delivers some message (could be about health care, banking reform, immigration, etc) they so enthusiastically agree with that they want to see it reach a much wider audience. It ought to be possible to go to a web interface of an online bookstore or publisher and bid for the right to make the next 10,000 copies of the book free to download. Or bid for the right to make the book freely downloadable for the next 3 days or the next month. Or make it free to download only in one geographic area (e.g. where a measure is on a ballot and you want people to read a relevant book).

Continue here….

If any philanthropists would like to “subsidize” the sale of The Path to Tyranny: A History of Free Society’s Descent into Tyranny, let me know and we’ll work something out.