The Power of the People
Ironically, Arendt uses metaphorical language to point out that a metaphorical political term—the power of the people—can actually be manifested as a literal energy.
“when the men of the French Revolution said that all power resides in the people, they understood by power a 'natural' force whose source and origin lay outside the political realm, a force which in its very violence had been released by the revolution and like a hurricane had swept away all institutions.”
“Death is the beginning of immortality”
Robespierre, the craziest of all the crazies who were responsible both for the beginning and the end of the French Revolution liked to talk philosophically in between signing warrants for enemies to be brought to the guillotine. The French Revolution reflects the best and worst of revolutionary spirit so there is a double layer to this philosophical musing of Robespierre. The most obvious, of course, is that immortality associated with eternal life in which death usually plays a very, very small role. The other is that Robespierre did attain immortality in his (ironic) death at the hands of the guillotine’s blade; just not the kind he expected.
The Most Powerful People in America
The author makes an unusual case for where the real center of power lies in the American government. What makes it especially unusual—aside from being neither the President or any representative of the legislation branch—is that this great power stems from a fundamental and seemingly paradoxical irony:
“Institutionally, it is lack of power, combined with permanence of office,. which signals that the true seat of authority in the American Republic is the Supreme Court.”
Democratic Despotism
Arendt becomes another voice attempting to explain the corrupted sensibility of republican processes of government in America which seem directly counter to basic democratic ideals. The reasoning—such as it is—helps to explain the “logic” behind such inexplicably anti-democratic aspects of American politics from the Electoral College to why half a million people in Wyoming get as many Senate votes as forty million Californians.
“…the Founding Fathers tended to equate rule based on public opinion with tyranny; democracy in this sense was to them but a newfangled form of despotism.”
The Accidental Revolution
A longstanding debate has been whether the colonists going to war with England was really a revolutionary war or something much more conservative. The author argues in favor of the view that it became a revolution only by accident, an inadvertent outcome of a more conservative origin that had nothing to do with such a revolutionary outcome as independence from England and recognition as a brand new nation. Ironically, it one of the singular figures associated with composing the Declaration of Independence who is quoted as evidence supporting this anti-revolutionary perspective:
"I never had heard in any Conversation from any Person drunk or sober, the least Expression of a wish for a Separation, or Hint that such a Thing would be advantageous to America.”
