One of the benefits of having a high school student in the house is finding out what she is studying in her history class. While I was watching the election results last night, my daughter asked me to look up the Federalist Paper Number 10. Although I’m pretty sure that the Constitutional scholars among us are already familiar with this essay, this would not have normally been something I would be pursuing. I was struck with the timeliness of the topic. Founding Father James Madison, in the Federalist paper Number 10, explained his concern about how factions could destroy governments because, in his words, “The instability, injustice, and confusion, introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have every where perished…As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed… By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison struggled with how to maintain liberty while corralling these factions that were then and still are currently created to further one group’s agenda over the rights of all. His suggestion was the creation of a representative republic so it can dilute “the influence of factious leaders (who) may kindle a flame within their particular states, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states: a religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it, must secure the national councils against any danger from that source: a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the union, than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire state.” teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/federalist-no-10/ Like it or not, the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party has assumed the textbook definition of the very thing Madison warned of in this essay. I am encouraged by the results of last night’s election, particularly nonbinding resolution in northern Colorado opening the door for certain counties to secede, the Alabama primary race and Virginia’s gubernatorial race. Madison’s vision of the power of the representative republic has held.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 18:04:31 +0000
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