Panic Through the Ages

I have a
review of Mark Stein’s book American Panic in today’s
Wall Street Journal. Here’s the opening:

In 1870, Thomas Mooney ran for governor of
California on a platform that one newspaper described as a plan “to
exterminate the Mongolian Race.” A year later, a mob of 500 whites
invaded Chinatown in Los Angeles, burning buildings and lynching 19
men. In 1876, after another mob torched a Chinese community in
Antioch, Calif., the San Francisco Chronicle editorialized that the
attack should “meet with the hearty approval of every man, woman,
and child on the Pacific coast.”

According to Mark Stein, author of “American Panic,” these assaults
were more than murder, arson and ethnic cleansing. They were, he
writes, a form of political panic, a phenomenon he defines as “the
irrational fear that one’s government is in danger.” Mr. Stein’s
book is an informative tour through some of the country’s most
notable spasms of fear, cataloging alleged threats ranging from
Freemasons to feminists, from the Vatican to Shariah law. He is not
always convincing, however, when he attempts to define panic or to
explain what these episodes mean.

To read the rest, go
here. Among other things, it is probably the first time anyone
has defended former vice president Dan Quayle and anarcho-communist
firebrand Johann Most in the same article. Or, for that matter, the
first time I’ve defended Dan Quayle or Johann Most in any
article.