Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear

In 1842 Heinrich Heine, the German poet, wrote that the bourgeoisie, ''obsessed by a nightmare apprehension of disaster'' and ''an instinctive dread of communism'', were driven against their better instincts into tolerating absolutist government. Theirs was a ''politics motivated by fear''. Over the next 150 years, the middle classes were repeatedly accused of betraying liberty for fear of ''red r...