America Is Living James Madison's Nightmare - Jeffrey Rosen (The Atlantic): the mob rule

The document under study is an article entitled "America Is Living James Madison's Nightmare". This except from the American magazine The Atlantic was published in the October 2018 issue. It was written by Jeffrey Rosen, an American academic and commentator on legal affairs. The audience of The Atlantic is mainly composed of "thought leaders" and the magazine supported Hillary Clinton during the last presidential elections. In this article, Jeffrey Rosen focuses on James Madison, one of the Founding Fathers and one of the main authors of the American Constitution. This politician was attached to the idea of a strong government resisting the "mob rule", the rule of the majority. Jeffrey Rosen uses this man as the starting point of his demonstration which wants to show that America is currently in the situation James Madison wanted to avoid, that is to say, where the "mob rule" dominates, where the electorate is deeply divided, where passions prevail over reason (notably thanks to social media), where the checks and balances system is undermined because of the overwhelming executive power The author of the article thus tries to find an explication and a solution to escape from this situation.