Plan for the Day
- Look ahead to next week’s Midterm Exam
- Discussion Post #5–Due Friday, 10/03, 11:07 pm
- Make sure you set a reminder
- Make sure your post gets uploaded on Canvas
- Do not use unauthorized tools “to write” these posts
- Overview of The Federalist Papers
- Deliberation
- Education (of course I’m interested in this)
- Jump back to Federalist Paper #10 (9/25’s class)
- Federalist Paper #51
- Logical Fallacies (specific ones for our Federalist Paper discussions)
- ad hominem
- false authority
- false dilemma (either-or fallacy)
- naturalistic fallacy
- post hoc ergo propter hoc
- Literally, “after this, therefore, because of this.”
- Democracy/Liberty/Freedom/ETC. quotation:
- “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
—Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. Federalist Paper #51. 8 Feb 2025, para. 1. - Of course, you should always scrutinize quotation attributions online…(search “angels)
- “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
Potential cold openning: Juice Newton “Angel Of The Morning”
Federalist Papers, an Overview
The Federalist Papers were a series of essays that asked “The People” to deliberate and conclude in favor of their respective State’s ratification of the Constitution. Interestingly, The Federalist Papers was an organized effort to counter essays against ratifying the Constitution, which were known as The Anti-Federalist Papers. Historians credit those with securing the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Although the Federalists won over enough voters to ratify the Constitution, the clash between the two factions (for lack of a better word…) had the result of establishing a strong(er) federal government but also a system that protected States’ rights (and individuals). We call federalism the system of government with a unifying central (federal) power that also respects States’ autonomy. Although it sounds as peculiar as “suffrage” meaning voting enfranchisement, federalism is the idea of upholding States’ rights. Sure, the federal power is hegemonic, but there’s autonomy among States to pass laws (not in conflict with the federal laws) that local citizens demand.
The Federalist Papers were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. The three were members of the Federalist Party, so, even though James Madison wrote about the evils of “factions” (Federalist #10) and George Washington’s “Farewell Address” warned of factionalism, there have been political parties from the founding of the United States. Madison and Hamilton are more well known, but Jay was the first (“acting” technically) Secretary of State and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Seems like an important guy!
Although I didn’t assign Federalist #1 (but probably should have), we should look at it as an introduction and justification for the Federalist project:
To the People of the State of New York:
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
–para. 1…
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
–para. 3
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist #51
These essays were written anonymously as were the Anti-Federalist Papers. This essay’s title is “The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments,” so, obviously, it’s going to explain checks and balances. Questions:
- Why are “checks and balances” a staple of American Democracy?
- Why do you think it was important that they use the pseudonym “Publius” (translated from Latin as “the people”)?
This essay, besides that cumbersome language of the grand style, has no paragraphs! That isn’t proper essay format, but here are some quotations for us to consider:
- “…separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government…essential to the preservation of liberty…”
- “…each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others.”
- “…all the appointments for the supreme executive, legislative, and judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain of authority, the people, through channels having no communication whatever with one another.”
- “…the judiciary department…
- “first, because peculiar qualifications being essential in the members, the primary consideration ought to be to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications;
- secondly, because the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them.”
- In plain language, what does this mean?
- What do nearly all current Supreme Court Justices have in common?
- “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
- Is this the same as MAD: mutually assured destruction, or is it something more specific to politics? In fact, let’s define politics again.
- “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
- “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.”
- “…the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.”
- Why should the legislative branch have the most authority?
- “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”
- “There are, moreover, two considerations particularly applicable to the federal system of America, which place that system in a very interesting point of view.
- First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments.
- In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments.
- Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people.”
- What do you think about the phrasing “surrendered by the people”?
- “Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.
- Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”
- First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments.
- “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
- In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger;
- and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.
- “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good;”
- This word salad basiclly means citizen interests are based on justice and promoting the general welfare.
- “…the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE.”
Next Class
We are going to finish up the discussion on our selection of the Federalist Papers on Thursday, 10/02. Next week, we won’t meet as a class because you’ll do your Midterm Exam online, and our Fall Break is Thursday and Friday: 10/9-10/10.