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Uncivil Disobedienceexamines the roles violence and terrorism have played in the exercise of democratic ideals in America. Jennet Kirkpatrick explores how crowds, rallying behind the principle of popular sovereignty and desiring to make law conform to justice, can disdain law and engage in violence. She exposes the hazards of democracy that arise when citizens seek to control government directly, and demonstrates the importance of laws and institutions as limitations on the will of the people. Kirkpatrick looks at some of the most explosive instances of uncivil disobedience in American history: the contemporary militia movement, Southern lynch mobs, frontier vigilantism, and militant abolitionism. She argues that the groups behind these violent episodes are often motivated by admirable democratic ideas of popular power and autonomy. Kirkpatrick shows how, in this respect, they are not so unlike the much-admired adherents of nonviolent civil disobedience, yet she reveals how those who engage in violent disobedience use these admirable democratic principles as a justification for terrorism and killing. She uses a \"bottom-up\" analysis of events to explain how this transformation takes place, paying close attention to what members of these groups do and how they think about the relationship between citizens and the law. Uncivil Disobediencecalls for a new vision of liberal democracy where the rule of the people and the rule of law are recognized as fundamental ideals, and where neither is triumphant or transcendent.

This is the frightening prospect, soberly presented by Michael Barkun in his important, just-published book A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. To understand the novelty of this potential requires knowing something about the history of conspiracy theories. Fears of a petty conspiracy - a political rival or business competitor plotting to do you harm - are as old as the human psyche. But fears of a grand conspiracy - that the Illuminati or Jews plan to take over the world - go back only 900 years and have been operational for just two centuries, since the French Revolution. Conspiracy theories grew in importance from then until World War II, when two arch-conspiracy theorists, Hitler and Stalin, faced off against each other, causing the greatest blood- letting in human history. THE MAJOR new development, reports Barkun, professor of political science in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, is not just an erosion in the divisions between these two groups, but their joining forces with occultists, persons bored by rationalism. Occultists are drawn to what Barkun calls the \"cultural dumping ground of the heretical, the scandalous, the unfashionable, and the dangerous\" - such as spiritualism, Theosophy, alternative medicine, alchemy, and astrology.

The attacks are used as justification for or against war in the Middle East, as a rallying cry for or against religious faith and as reason to ease privacy protections, prompting others to fight back at the perceived erosion of civil liberties. Hollywood has entered the fray, releasing major motion pictures this year presenting 9/11 as stories of American heroism. Michael Barkun, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said the attacks are redrawing the traditional boundaries separating church and state. He cited as an example federal guidelines enacted in 2002 allowing FBI agents to openly attend religious services, ostensibly to monitor sermons. Two recent movies, Michael Moore's \"Fahrenheit 9/11,\" and Oliver Stone's \"World Trade Center,\" present vastly different views of 9/ 11 and reflect the divide. The former took aim at the [Bush] administration and was embraced by the left; the latter presented the attacks as a tale of American heroism and was championed by the right.

Robert David Thomas reviews \"Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-over District of New York in the 1840s,\" by Michael Barkun.

More than any other scholar in America, Barkun, a political scientist at Syracuse University, knows his way around the arcane world of contemporary conspiracy theorists. His 1994 book Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement is highly regarded. The interests of the community he examines in this new work go far beyond garden-variety speculation about the Kennedy assassination or the death of Vincent Foster.

[George Bilunka]'s former wife, Cherry Hogenmiller, had tried to convince a judge that he was harmless. Federal Magistrate Susan Paradise Baxter didn't believe her and ordered Bilunka jailed until trial. \"His ex-wife's testimony demonstrates ... he has the ability to hide his dangerous views and activities when he wishes,\" Baxter said. \"That's just the rankest hearsay,\" said [Joseph Conte], who won't say if Bilunka belongs to a militia. \"At worst, [Bilunka's comments are] just rhetoric by people that don't intend to hurt anybody.\" Bilunka, a 59-year-old retiree from Atlantic, and Darrell Sivik, 56, a gunsmith from Meadville, were arrested on charges Sivik sold a $300 homemade Sten machine gun to an undercover agent introduced to him by Bilunka. Authorities say Bilunka also bought at least one illegal machine gun from Sivik.

\"That's just the rankest hearsay,\" said [Joseph Conte], who won't say if [George Bilunka] belongs to a militia. \"At worst, [Bilunka's comments are] just rhetoric by people that don't intend to hurt anybody. The government's got no reason to be concerned.\" Bilunka, 59, a retiree from Atlantic, and Darrell Sivik, 56, a gunsmith from Meadville, were arrested in March on charges Sivik sold a $300 homemade Sten machine gun to an undercover agent introduced to him by Bilunka. Bilunka also bought at least one illegal machine gun from Sivik, authorities say. The government contends Bilunka trained his group to kill SWAT officers and wrote a violent manifesto centered on Christ's Second Coming in 2009 and the need to survive one last, horrible war before the world ends in 2012. Bilunka had an underground bunker on his 27- acre homestead equipped with six months' supply of food.

Jan M. Saltzgaber reviews \"Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-Over District of New York in the 1840s,\" by Michael Barkun.

Scott McLemee reviews the book \"Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement\" by Michael Barkun.