"Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify 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 it’s natural manure."
Jefferson would have shrugged off today, much as he shrugged off Shay's Rebellion and (more or less) supported the Whiskey Rebellion (later repealing that stupid tax). He also supported the French Revolution, not for what happened, but for its original principles.
People can't always be well informed - and certainly with nonsense information spewing from not only the 'mainstream' media but also from myriad other 'sources' like Qanon - we need more than ever to look back through history and put things in perspective both ideologically and historically. Few people remember 1954 and Puerto Rican nationalists shooting up Congress. Today's events may have been wrong and lawless, but they are not at all unusual or necessarily misguided in the larger scheme of US history.
