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The First Revolutions In the Minds of the People

The First Revolutions in the Minds of the People is the first book in a four-book series. In these books, author James Thomson presents detailed discussions of the social revolutions that over 200 years produced the tyranny of benevolence Alexis de Tocqueville described in Democracy in America (1840).

The first “revolution in the minds of the people” took place in London during the 1760s when a charming scoundrel named John Wilkes borrowed William Pitt’s method of speaking to his constituents “in the voice of the people” and began a campaign to win a place in England’s closed political establishment. His unlikely victory inspired the English people to use the weight of their numbers to gain a voice for themselves in England’s political process.

Wilkes’s success inspired Sam Adams who used Wilkes’s method to rouse his countrymen against King George III. Mr. Thompson explains that whatever success Adams achieved owed to his use of intimidation to suppress the King’s supporters. As the King’s governments became inoperable, Adams’s compatriots replaced them with governments run by themselves. Professor Bailyn chose to ignore these facts because he wanted to transform the American Revolution into a campaign by civic humanists (like himself) who were seeking to rid American society of social inequality and injustice.

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The Second American Revolution

In The Second American Revolution, author James Thompson provides a long overdue explication of the ten-year insurgency James Madison managed for his partisan friend, Thomas Jefferson.

Their revolution began in 1791 and ended in 1801. It differed from the one Sam Adams orchestrated in the 1770s, Mr. Thompson explains, because Jefferson and Madison sought to rid the nation’s new republican government of its wrongheaded administrators—and run it themselves—not overthrow and replace it with something else.

The author shows how the two partisans divided the American people against themselves with streams of political vitriol, and how as they did this, they built an anti-government congressional majority of southerners and westerners by recruiting candidates and managing their elections. The method and mechanisms they developed during their insurgency transformed the nation’s enlightened new majoritarian system into a weapon that adversarial parties have used ever since. Mr. Thompson argues that this adversarial party system, fueled by intentionally divisive rhetoric, prevented Americans from pursuing a common good. Beyond this, Jefferson and Madison showed that by being well-organized, a party could perpetuate control of the government and the people.

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The Third American Revolution

“FDR” launched the third American Revolution in 1933 when he unveiled his New Deal. His agents used the methods and machinery devised by their predecessors. But it was an innovation of their own that delivered the American people into the hands of Tocquevillean shepherds.

“New Dealers” designed a “welfare” system administered by panels of like-thinking bureaucrats. These panels had the power made and enforced regulations without seeking the consent of the people. Thus was bureaucratic government born in America!

The problem was always apparent: the benefactors who distributed the government’s largess had their own interests. This was the conflict!

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James Collins Thompson

When I write, I draw on interests I cultivated while studying Philosophy as an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of Virginia I understand now that I enjoyed Philosophy because I am interested in the History of Ideas. I write about Ideas, what they encompass, how they form, how they change as they move from place to place, what happens to them as they do, and the impact they have as men and women apply them..

In the real world, ideas advance from before to after, from back to front. My objective as an author is to follow them as they advance out of the thickets in one person’s mind and through the thickets..

What I Write

AN INTERVIEW WITH
AUTHOR JAMES THOMPSON

On Cox Cable 20 November 2014
Virginia Time Travel featured James Thompson,
author of The Birth of Virginia’s Aristocracy

This episode can also be viewed on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nESbKlhfPJE

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Books by the Author​​

This was not just a matter of accumulating wealth and political influence. Virginia’s aristocracy was
born, I explain, when Colonel Richard Lee II transferred his allegiance..

Our Books 

Our Books 

Our Books 

Our Books 

The First Revolutions in the Minds of the People

This seemingly impossible transformation was completed, Mr. Thompson explains, during the Third American Revolution, which he says began during the Great Depression. In its course, beleaguered Americans transferred their sovereignty to the administrators of the government Franklin Roosevelt created to aid victims of the nation’s economic collapse.

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Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment: Paris – 1785

Readers who are familiar with the last new Thomas Jefferson, being the caricature admiring members of what I call “the political-historical complex” created in the middle of the 20th century, will probably not recognize the man portrayed in this colorful book.

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George Washington’s Mulatto Man: Who Was Billy Lee

In George Washington’s Mulatto Man – Who was Billy Lee, I connect dots from a series of events that began more than twenty-five years before our forefathers declared their political independence from England and ended more than twenty-five years after they achieved it.

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 The Birth of Virginia’s Aristocracy

The Birth of Virginia’s Aristocracy explains how the first civil society formed in Virginia, what purposes it served, who its members were, and what happened to it as it aged. The transformation of Virginia’s leading families into an “aristocracy” was the final stage in the development of its first society.

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Programs & Presentations

This was not just a matter of accumulating wealth and political influence. Virginia’s aristocracy was
born, I explain, when Colonel Richard Lee II transferred his allegiance..

Virginia Historical Society Lecture..

Banner Lecture at the Virginia Historical Society

Thomas Jefferson in France

Daughters of the American Revolution Lecture

DAR: The Washingtons, the Fairfaxes, and Billy Lee

The Washingtons, the Fairfaxes, and Billy Lee

Salmagundi Club
Lecture:

Salmagundi Club: WWI Illustrators

Salmagundi Illustrators of WWI

Virginia Time Travel: Billy LeeVirginia Time Travel
Interview:

Virginia Time Travel: Billy Lee

What did Billy Lee Look Like?

School of Architecture
University of Virginia

Department of Architectural History, 60th anniversary
of the Bachelor of Architectural History program

School of Architecture UVA: Jefferson and Freemasonry in France

Jefferson and Freemasonry in France

Kirkus Reviews

1AmRevs backcover Kirkus: “A spirited reconsideration of the causes of the American Revolution that takes aim at the views of acclaimed historian Bernard Bailyn.” Kirkus Reviews

2AmRev backcover Kirkus: “Erudite yet accessible, the book makes a convincing case against Jefferson that draws on both a rich body of historical literature and primary source material.” Kirkus Reviews

CONTACT ME

This was not just a matter of accumulating wealth and political influence. Virginia’s aristocracy was
born, I explain, when Colonel Richard Lee II transferred his allegiance..

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