Dan Edelstein

How an event once considered the greatest of all political dangers came to be seen as a solution to all social problems Political thinkers from Plato to John Adams saw revolutions as a grave threat to society and advocated for a constitution that prevented them by balancing social interests and forms of government. The Revolution to Come traces how evolving...

Natural right—the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are “natural” in origin—is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. In The Terror of Natural Right, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the “enemy of the human race”—an individual who has transgressed the...