Introduction

Thomas Jefferson once said "Let them take arms … What signifies a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots [and] tyrants. It is its natural manure." Jefferson, a member of the political establishment, firmly believed in regular, radical change in government. He wrote the above lines (quoted in Nathan Schachner's book Thomas Jefferson, A Biography) in 1787 in response to Shay's Rebellion, a small revolt that had occurred in Massachusetts the year before. The same year he wrote in another letter (quoted in Schachner), "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, [and] as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical…. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."

Revolution has long been a way of...