This also can be traced back to shallowness. The Boston Tea Party would probably not occur now. The Bill of Rights would not pass in Congress nor in any state Legislature in these times. This people is not interested. It was hard to be sure whether it was sincerely a case of well-wishing.
Interesting times can be dangerous, or troublesome.
But we are living in shallow times. He may have overstated it. The issue when he wrote that, during the American Revolution, wasn't freedom or liberty or slavery or opportunity. Freedom had almost nothing to do with it. Yet people did become stirred up, and seriously.