I recently completed a full reading of the Federalist Papers for the first time. It was the first time since high school I had cracked the cover of the book and my reaction to it was rather different than I recall the first time around.
America reveres its constitution, yet the men who wrote it would surely be astounded by the strength of today’s federal government and the comparative weakness of the states. This sentence, essayed a few years ago in a British newspaper (The Economist) surprised me a bit. I had always had a fond, though not particularly educated, admiration for the genius of the Founders, and I was surprised to consider that this whole thing had played out much differently from how they would have (mistakenly?) expected. This lit a match under the Jules Goldberg contraption which is my memory, and ultimately got me to thinking about the semester of US Government class in high school, during which we were required to read certain numbers of The Federalist Papers. It was the fall of 1988, Ronald Reagan had served our nation for eight mostly glorious years, and in spite of the general snarkiness fondly directed at our illustrious leader by many of my classmates, I had escaped the strenuously clever cynicism embraced by many my age and unironically considered myself lucky and proud to be an American.
At the time I had only limited understanding of how the federal government worked; sure, I knew the three branches, checks and balances and all that, and wrote a really compelling paper urging abandonment of the Electoral College in favor of the direct popular election of the president, as all high school students seem obliged to advocate at some point, but most of the nuances were completely lost on me. I nonetheless had a rather touching belief that what we as a people were about was right, and that our seemingly eternal system of government was the very best which the genius of man could conceivably produce. In comparison to the systems of government labored under by those in the USSR, China, East Germany, and even much of Europe in 1988, I was not altogether without basis in believing this.
So I was handed a dog-eared paperback copy of The Federalist Papers. The subject was broached with some introductory remarks from our instructor which seemed to last longer than could be believed, but from which all I absorbed was that the Papers were a plain-English explanation of how the Founding Fathers (thus were they still called in the halcyon days before political correctness) meant for the new Constitutional government to work, stripped of all the 18th-Century legalese of the Constitution itself. The papers had been written in opposition to a group collectively known as the Anti-Federalists, who had urged rejection of the Constitution.
This may have been bland oversimplification, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t paying attention and that was all I gleaned from the introductory remarks. I already knew the Constitution represents an inspired form of government and was written by men of rare elemental genius; I didn’t know who these Anti-Federalists were but they sounded like assholes. They sounded to me like those Southern Rebs of a later era, intent on gratuitously wrecking everything for the rest of us, for sake of advancing their own selfish interests. And I was sure that this book, written after all by the guy on the ten-dollar bill, spoke the truth and advocated a form of government which could scarcely be improved.
But I didn’t want to read it. I was never terribly serious in high school about, well, classes or anything, and I recall harboring an aversion to completing the assignment for some reason. Which response was typical for me, and not particular to the reading assignment. No matter how much truth was contained in that book, I had little interest in reading a “plain-English” commentary on the subject written in 18th-Century prose, which was indistinguishable to me at the time from the King James Bible or Shakespeare. I was pretty sure I had all the truth I needed already, and didn’t want to sink the work into it to get any more.
Yeah. I was a pain in the ass in high school. If you’re wondering how I ever graduated with an attitude like this, you’re not alone.
So I kind of schlepped through the assignment, skimming through what we were to read and ignoring what we were to skim, bluffed my way through whatever exams or papers were required, and generally didn’t take much away from the whole experience, except that we were lucky Alexander Hamilton had been on our side and hadn’t been a Communist or something; and that upon my supposedly closer examination, the Anti-Federalists were still assholes.
Fifteen humbling years later, I found myself engaged in an online discussion with a gentleman over the real causes why the Federal government had become so much more powerful than the Founders would have expected, prompted by that throwaway remark mentioned earlier from The Economist. I’ve become a rather mild form of one of those states’ rights wackos: I believe the Federal government is rather too big and much too powerful for our collective good, but I don’t spend my free time scanning the horizon for black UN helicopters or refusing to drink fluoridated water or any other such silly nonsense. I was explaining my personal theory that virtually all our troubles along these lines can be traced to the sixteenth amendment, due to the power this allows of conditional appropriations, and that while repeal of this amendment is too radical a notion to be likely, it would result in a relationship between the States and Federal governments much more consistent with what the Federalists had wanted.
This gentleman surprised me by saying that it was the Federalists’ fault we were in this particular mess; the Anti-Federalists had objected to the original Constitution because it did too little to protect individual and states’ rights and did not contain effective checks upon the Federal government. Far from being crazed wackos, the Anti-Federalists had actually been right all along—the proposed Constitution sowed the seeds for its own eventual demise, and, once ratified, really did lead to a preposterously powerful national government. This whole notion slapped my ignorant little high school paradigm right between the eyes, and I realized that if I were to have any self-respect as a commentator on this particular subject, or if I could have the slightest pretense to holding an informed opinion, I’d have to look into this in some detail.
I’ve never read much direct political philosophy. I flatter myself I’m a practical analyst, not a philosopher, and most of my reading has been in economics and most of my arguing has been over economic policy. I’d always taken for granted that the system basically works, and never questioned how or why, and only debated what was best to be done within the system itself. That suddenly seemed rather a superficial conclusion to have reached with having conducted no real analysis whatever.
So I reached for my copy of The Federalist Papers, which I had bought (partially, perhaps, out of guilt for my treatment of it in high school) ten years ago yet had never opened, and began to read. I discovered delightedly that it’s not quite as textually dense as the King James Bible—though it’s close. But offsetting that happy discovery was the fact that it’s 600 pages long and it ended up taking me three months to plod through it all.
It was an eye-opening and profitable experience. The first thing that strikes the modern reader was just how dire the situation was when the Constitution was written. Everyone knows the Articles of Confederation were bad, but it’s rather lost on most of us today just how bad.
The entire Federal government in 1787 consisted of a unicameral legislature. That was it. It had some theoretically unlimited (but highly theoretical) abilities to levy troops and taxes, but no ability to enforce its levies. And it was to levy these not directly from the populace as a whole, but from the various state governments, which then had to take positive steps to comply with the Federal government’s requests. Or to partially comply. Or to drag their feet in interminable debate about which states are paying their fair share or more than, and whether to comply fully, partially, or not at all. Eventually. An modern analogy which comes to mind is the highly political debate in the US Congress which periodically surfaces about contributing troops to UN peacekeeping efforts, or even to paying UN dues; and the outcome to these discussions under the Articles of Confederation was about as timely and reliable as this modern analogue.
With the credit and survivability of the early Union seriously in doubt, there were at least some voices which advocated complete dissolution of the Union in favor of thirteen individual republics bound by nothing stronger than a NATO-style defensive alliance, or a series of bilateral defensive alliances, or even three or four miniature nations, comprised of the regional confederacy of several states. As preposterous as these ideas sound to the modern reader, discoursing on the dangers of such an approach occupied the first thirteen papers, suggesting that this outcome was not entirely out of the question even then (though the authors suggested this was a recent and outlandish notion).
So, having fought a rugged war for independence and struggled along under the ineffective Articles for some time, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 passed this proposed constitution, with the stipulation that it would take effect if conventions in three-fourths of the states approved it. It’s not entirely clear what would have become of any minority of states which rejected ratification, should three-fourths have passed it. So with seven states having already ratified it, in 1788-89 James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote a series of essays encouraging adoption, which appeared in various New York newspapers during the debates in that state whether to support ratification.
With this as a backdrop, the three authors first discussed whether it would be advantageous even to sustain the Union (papers 1-13 argued that it would be); whether the current government was up to the task (14-22 argued that it was not); and then addressed more or less particular complaints which had been heard during the debates and which had appeared in newspapers and pamphlets over the remaining 63 articles.
The general tenor of the arguments directed against the Anti-Federalists is, indeed, an argument for stronger federal institutions. That was slightly disheartening, and seemed at the outset to suggest that my Anti-Federalist correspondent had perhaps been correct. But there’s more to it than that suggests.
It’s quite significant that the papers were written at a time when the entire history of the American Union comprised a period of tremendous weakness in the national government and a corresponding strength in the state governments; and that we read those papers today in a period where precisely the opposite is true. When Hamilton, especially, called for an energetic federal government, he did so relative to the striking ineptitude and helplessness of the federal government as it existed at the time. He urged that reason dictates that a government have powers adequate to execute their purposes, which itself seems unexceptional; he seemed to believe that the government needed to be as powerful as the Constitution proposed just in order to do those things expected of it by other sections of the Constitution.
But the Federalists were insistent that the proposed system was genuinely federal, not national. James Madison spent the entirety of paper 39 contrasting the characteristics of typical Federal, and typical National, governments, ultimately concluding that the proposed system had, well, a lot of both. Madison sums up the substance of the debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists smartly, by attributing the following amalgamation of arguments to the Anti-Federalists:
“But it was not sufficient,” say the adversaries of the proposed Constitution, “for the convention to adhere to the republican form. They ought, with equal care, to have preserved the FEDERAL form, which regards the Union as a CONFEDERACY of sovereign states; instead of which, they have framed a NATIONAL government, which regards the Union as a CONSOLIDATION of the States.” (Madison, Fed 39, emphasis in original)
He proceeded to show, over the balance of this paper, that the proposed government was of a mixed form, insofar as it guaranteed a republican form of government to the states: the states are sovereign within their own boundaries over certain administrative elements; the federal government is sovereign over certain other administrative elements within each state’s boundaries. This concept of dual sovereignty is the whole essence of Federalism.
The Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; (…) this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a NATIONAL, but a FEDERAL act. (Ibid.)
In a further passage which could only be written before adoption of the 17th Amendment, which amendment provides for US Senators to be elected by the people at large, rather than state legislatures, Madison continues:
The House of Representatives will derive its powers from the people of America; and the people will be represented in the same proportion, and on the same principle, as they are in the legislature of a particular State. So far the government is NATIONAL, not FEDERAL. The Senate, on the other hand, will derive its powers from the States, as political and coequal societies; and these will be represented on the principle of equality in the Senate, as they now are in the existing Congress. So far the government is FEDERAL, not NATIONAL. (Ibid.)
This reliance on appointment of US Senators by the state legislatures is eye-opening for the modern American reader. The whole notion of relegating the appointment of Senators to a small legislative body instead of a popular vote seems so…undemocratic. This is addressed at some length in a later paper, and is a subject to which we shall return here as well.
Madison continues his argument to justify labeling the new government as mixed, neither quite national nor quite federal:
The executive power will be derived from a very compound source. The immediate election of the President is to be made by the States in their political characters. The votes allotted to them are in a compound ratio, which considers them partly as distinct and coequal societies, partly as unequal members of the same society. The eventual election, again, is to be made by that branch of the legislature which consists of the national representatives; but in this particular act they are to be thrown into the form of individual delegations, from so many distinct and coequal bodies politic. From this aspect of the government it appears to be of a mixed character, presenting at least as many FEDERAL as NATIONAL features.
If we try the Constitution by its last relation to the authority by which amendments are to be made, we find it neither wholly NATIONAL nor wholly FEDERAL. Were it wholly national, the supreme and ultimate authority would reside in the MAJORITY of the people of the Union; and this authority would be competent at all times, like that of a majority of every national society, to alter or abolish its established government. Were it wholly federal, on the other hand, the concurrence of each State in the Union would be essential to every alteration that would be binding on all. The mode provided by the plan of the convention is not founded on either of these principles. In requiring more than a majority, and particularly in computing the proportion by STATES, not by CITIZENS, it departs from the NATIONAL and advances towards the FEDERAL character; in rendering the concurrence of less than the whole number of States sufficient, it loses again the FEDERAL and partakes of the NATIONAL character. (Ibid.)
So how to reconcile the intent of the Founders to have produced a mixed government, and the observations of (among many others) The Economist and my Anti-Federalist correspondent that the Federal government has far, far more power than was ever intended in Philadelphia in 1787? Some participants in the Convention, including, as it turns out, Hamilton and Madison, had argued for a more nationalist government to begin with. But these notions were rejected, and the Convention finally approved a plan genuinely intended to ensure national security while preserving the substance, not just the form, of dual sovereignty. They intended it to be mixed, and it eventually became preponderantly unmixed nationalism. What happened?
It bears some consideration why the Founders believed the mixed government would retain some considerable permanence, and not be encroached on one side (oppression of the states by the Federal government) or the other (disregard of the Federal government by the states). Madison, again, writes:
Several important considerations have been touched in the course of these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the State governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of the last than of the first scale. (Madison, Fed 45)
This obviously proved wildly inaccurate. It’s clear that the actual practice, as embodied in the, shall we say, informally granted powers of the Federal government, have tended in precisely the opposite direction as anticipated—more power for the Federales, less power for the states. I don’t pretend to having my admiration for the Founders diminished by having stumbled upon such an error, but it is at this point one must recognize that while the practical system they put in place has worked rather well for some considerable time, some of their early judgments were entirely off the mark. Mistaken, indeed. I have a few notions how this has come to pass; but let’s consider Madison’s arguments: for this there is no better place to start than by examining paper 45, The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered, fairly closely.
Madison begins paper 45 with the assertion that “HAVING shown that no one of the powers transferred to the federal government is unnecessary or improper, the next question to be considered is, whether the whole mass of them will be dangerous to the portion of authority left in the several States.” My purpose in this discussion is not to examine minutely all the arguments in favor of the Constitution, and I’m willing to grant at this point that most of the particular powers actually granted to the Federal government by the Constitution do, in fact, seem reasonable and consistent with its responsibilities; and that Madison, Hamilton, and Jay have presented a compelling enough justification for them in the papers which preceded number 45.
Madison continues in paper 45 by pointing to some historical analogies, which seem vaguely unsatisfying: the Achaean League, and the Lycian Confederacy, both of which had been discussed briefly in previous articles. The Achaean League was a federation of Greek city-states in the age of the early Roman Republic. The Lycian Confederacy was comprised of a number of city-state petty republics scattered throughout what is now Turkey, and was a few centuries after the dissolution of the Achaean League. Madison notes that
In the Achaean league it is probable that the federal head had a degree and species of power, which gave it a considerable likeness to the government framed by the convention. The Lycian Confederacy, as far as its principles and form are transmitted, must have borne a still greater analogy to it. Yet history does not inform us that either of them ever degenerated, or tended to degenerate, into one consolidated government. On the contrary, we know that the ruin of one of them proceeded from the incapacity of the federal authority to prevent the dissensions, and finally the disunion, of the subordinate authorities. (Madison, Fed 45)
It’s probably similar to the Convention’s planned government; and history doesn’t precisely say that either collapsed into nationalism. I may be looking at this too hard, but this probable similarity and absence of a known negative outcome isn’t an entirely compelling argument. But, returning to Madison:
The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former. Without the intervention of the State legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all. They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will, perhaps, in most cases, of themselves determine it. (Ibid)
This, presumably, refers to Article II, Section 1, which describes the term of the President and his manner of election: “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress,” describing thusly the composition of the electoral college (emphasis added). The general process, including the reliance upon the state legislatures to determine some of the particulars of the election, has held up reasonably well, but has (especially recently) seen substantial encroachments upon this power by the Federal courts.
Not all this encroachment has been for the worse; states being obligated to drop Jim Crow laws designed to minimize black participation in the electoral process is itself an unalloyed good, for example. But Florida 2000 was of course a horrible mess, with the US Supreme Court ultimately deciding how matters would be conducted in what should have been primarily (according to Article II) a state matter. This was necessary, or even possible, only because of the bizarre activism of the State Supreme Court, in its attempt to rewrite rules after the election and subject different parts of the state to differing methods and standards for the recount. In both these instances, (Jim Crow and Florida) the Federal courts put paid to what was legitimately bogus state laws (or activist judicial interpretation of state laws, in the Florida case); the only unfortunate element to these Federal rulings is that by now all parties recognize that the Federal courts are unambiguously in charge of how elections are run, and the state legislatures are reduced to determining trivial administrative elements to the election (the form, but not the substance, of certification for example). So with respect to this particular argument of Madison’s, one potential factor tilting the relative power in favor of the state governments has been eliminated by (admittedly otherwise salutary) Federal judicial activism. Madison continues:
The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State legislatures. (Ibid)
This no longer applies, since the 17th Amendment devolved this power to the people at large. While this amendment was intended to reduce the rampant corruption which dominated the process of appointing US Senators in the state legislatures, it did remove one of the most significant hurdles to Nationalism (as opposed to Federalism). Even in cases where the Federal Congress does not overstep its constitutional limits, it has tremendous power to bully state governments by way of conditional expenditures. These are, as the name implies, Federal expenditures on state matters, which are approved only as conditioned upon state legislatures “voluntarily” adopting a policy preferred by the Federal Congress. An excellent example of this was the 1974 adoption by the Congress of a Federal 55-MPH “suggested” speed limit. This speed limit was binding on Interstate highways, but not on State highways; however, states were—shall we say—encouraged to voluntarily adopt the 55-MPH limit on State highways as well, by Federal threat of withholding highway maintenance monies which would otherwise flow from Federal taxpayers and ultimately to the states. The puzzling logic of a Federal tax, partially paid by Ohioans, which would then only be refunded to Ohio for use on maintaining Ohio roads if the Ohio legislature adopted the Federal position, is an effective (though not legal) breach of the principle of dual sovereignty espoused by the Founders at the time of ratification of the Constitution.
As well intended as the 17th Amendment may have been in fighting corruption, it is hard to imagine conditional expenditures being used to thwart Federalist (dual sovereignty) principles by a US Senate elected and beholden directly to state legislatures. Using a financial end-around such as the highway-monies-for-speed-limits measure to strip state legislatures of their original portions of sovereignty would not likely have been approved by a body elected by those very state legislators whose power would thereby be denuded. And preventing this subtle usurpation of state power was entirely the principle behind having the Federal Senate appointed by State legislatures:
It is equally unnecessary to dilate on the appointment of senators by the State legislatures. Among the various modes which might have been devised for constituting this branch of the government, that which has been proposed by the convention is probably the most congenial with the public opinion. It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems. (Hamilton or Madison, Fed 62)
Adoption of the 17th Amendment therefore was intended to curb one evil (corruption), but decidedly allowed expansion of another (nationalism). And, sadly, with the perhaps unavoidable influence of big money in politics today, I am scarcely convinced that corruption has even been meaningfully reduced in the election of US Senators today despite adoption of the 17th Amendment.
But back to Madison:
Thus, each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the State governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little, if at all, to the local influence of its members. (Madison, Fed 45)
Hm. We have seen that the Federal judiciary now is the final arbiter of how states run their own elections, including that for president; that the Federal Senate is no longer dependent for its existence on the actions of the state legislature; and nowhere in this paper is the third branch mentioned (the judiciary). Even in its original form, the judiciary was dependent on the states only insofar as the Federal Senate exercised its advice and consent responsibility in the confirmation of Federal judges, and the Senators were themselves appointed by the State legislatures. The increased activism by, and reverence for, the Supreme Court, coupled with the 17th Amendment, have rendered all Madison’s arguments based on structures null thus far.
He continues by observing that there will be more State officers (of all departments) than corresponding Federal officers. This is perhaps unexceptional but is also somewhat unconvincing; his main argument here seems to be that since more of any given individual’s friends and family will be officers of his state than will be Federal officers in his state, the average citizen will feel more loyalty to the State officers (and hence the State government) than the Federal opposites. This is all slightly dubious but not really enough for us to dawdle over this point, with so much still to cover.
Suddenly Madison wanders rapidly into the weeds with his next expectation which failed to pan out:
It is true, that the Confederacy is to possess, and may exercise, the power of collecting internal as well as external taxes throughout the States; but it is probable that this power will not be resorted to, except for supplemental purposes of revenue; that an option will then be given to the States to supply their quotas by previous collections of their own; and that the eventual collection, under the immediate authority of the Union, will generally be made by the officers, and according to the rules, appointed by the several States. Indeed it is extremely probable, that in other instances, particularly in the organization of the judicial power, the officers of the States will be clothed with the correspondent authority of the Union.
Should it happen, however, that separate collectors of internal revenue should be appointed under the federal government, the influence of the whole number would not bear a comparison with that of the multitude of State officers in the opposite scale. (Ibid)
This, clearly, is as untrue as the original assertion that the states were likelier to bully or ignore the Federal government than the opposite, and is almost laughably inaccurate to anyone who’s ever dealt with the IRS. What happened here?
Well, the IRS is a good place to start. The IRS wasn’t formed until after the 16th Amendment was ratified, which only in 1913 authorized the Federal Government to enact an unlimited tax to be levied upon citizens’ income. Prior to the ratification of that amendment, the Federal government relied primarily on excise taxes for revenue. Total Federal outlays in 1912, the year before the collection of unlimited income tax was permitted, amounted to $690 Million. Ten years later, that figure had swelled to $3.289 Billion, a fivefold increase (Office of Management and Budget, FY2002 Federal Budget.)
After WWII concluded and the economy demobilized from a war footing, by 1947 Federal outlays dropped to $34.496 Billion (14.7% of GDP); by 2002 these figures had ballooned to $2.011Trillion and 19.5% of GDP. (Office of Management and Budget, FY2004 Federal Budget.) Growth in Federal government spending clearly outpaces economic growth, and nothing fuels a massive temptation to spend like the ability to massively increase taxes. The income tax allows precisely that.
This massive uptick in Federal receipts and outlays means that a greater proportion of total economic activity involves the Federal government as a direct participant than is strictly necessary, giving the Federales a disproportionate amount of influence as to how that money is spent. The conditional appropriations example from earlier applies as an excellent example here as well; the Federal government has no real relevance to questions of certain expenditures like maintenance of Ohio highways. If Ohioans paid more State taxes commensurate with paying fewer Federal taxes, Ohio’s elected state Representatives could decide or not decide on its own whether the State’s highways needed maintenance, and also could decide on its own whether to adopt the “suggested” 55-MPH Federal speed limit on its own roads.
It therefore follows clearly that the actual preponderance of Federal power at the expense of the State governments, quite contrary of what the Founders predicted would happen, can thus also be partially attributed to the 16th and 17th Amendments, both ratified in 1913. Granting the Federal government tremendous new powers of taxation at the same time as removing the primary mechanism for State governments to directly check the ambitions of the Federal government has led to a highly nationalistic result which, frankly, should have been easy to anticipate.
Add to this the Union’s strength being forged in a grim Civil War, and the sense of nationhood developed during two World Wars this past century, and the conscious attempts made during the New Deal to increase the relevance and influence of the Federal government over citizens’ daily lives, and it becomes rather clearer how the spirit of Federalism has waned somewhat, and a sense of nationalism has replaced it. It is not a mere antique artifact of the period’s written English that, during the time of the Founders, the Union was referred to as “These United States,” implying a plural group acting together; while today, of course, we refer to “The United States,” a monolithic body. Telephones, the internet, and air travel all contribute to nationhood, but must we have an inexorable march toward nationalism and the permanent abandonment of Federalism?
Now the ongoing sparring between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists during 1787-89 can be cast in rather a different light. Upon a short bit of further reading while preparing this article, I uncovered the fact that Hamilton had participated in the 1787 convention, but had quit in frustration when it was clear that his arguments in favor of installing a constitutional monarch would be rejected. He ultimately signed the Convention’s findings and draft Constitution, despite disagreeing with the plan himself, and argued in the Federalist Papers for ratification primarily because the alternative to ratification was a continuance of the status quo under the Articles of Confederation, which he believed would be fatal for the nation. And Madison may have preferred a much more nationalistic government himself, calling at one point for the Federal Congress to have a negative (veto) over laws enacted by the various state legislatures.
Clearly from all this, it is superficial to refer simply to the beliefs or intents of “the Founders,” as if they had a monolithic and uniform strategy which they enacted in the face of public opposition. That Hamilton argued against his own original position because he then believed the alternative was truly in the nation’s interest speaks highly of his patriotism, back when such a label had an actual meaning and was not mainly used in the negative against one’s political opponents. And for me, the debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists has only been explored from one perspective thus far, that of an advocacy piece authored collectively by a small group of Federalists. I have acquired a two-volume set from the Library of America, The Debate on the Constitution, which contains pamphlets, newspaper articles, private letters, and Convention speeches both for and against the proposed Constitution. I have moved this to the top of the reading queue.
These few thoughts on The Federalist Papers only, after all, address one element of the matter. So much remains to be read, digested, and discussed.
It’s amazing what studying the source documents can do for one’s understanding of politics. I only wish modern politics could just occasionally consist of civilized discussion, even disagreement, on principles, relieving us of the sight of Senators themselves waving silly placards and demagoguing over whether to give or not give free pills to senior citizens. That the world’s most august deliberative body is reduced to such claptrap is perhaps the biggest shame of all.
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