Back to School: The Federalist Papers (Pt.1)

Summer is over!  Time for our first reading assignment!

This being an election year, and our government being reliant upon the voice of a well-informed electorate, I’ll be assigning the Federalist Papers.

The Federalist Papers, for everyone who fell asleep in history class (seriously you’re yawning right now, aren’t you? Please try to stay awake.  I have a point here, and it’s important), are a series of essays written in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison (when’s he getting a musical?), and John Jay in order to convince New York to ratify the new Constitution of the United States

"Seriously, no one has any idea who I am."

One of the major themes that is immediately evident running through the 85 essays that comprise the Federalist Papers is the call for Unity among the different states.  It may seem strange to us today that the union of the United States was not always a foregone conclusion.  Or, as Hamilton wrote, "It may perhaps be thought superfluous to offer arguments to prove the utility of the Union...But the fact is, that we already hear it whispered...that the Thirteen States are of too great extent for any general system, and that we must of necessity resort to separate confederacies of distinct portions of the whole."

But, you might be thinking, why?  Why not come together into a full Union?  After all, the states were free, they were already united under the Articles of Confederation, they’d already come together to defeat the world superpower of the time, and this nation was destined to become the new global superpower, to extend its reach all the way past the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean and extend its ideas of freedom from monarchy all over the world.  Why did they have to argue FOR uniting the states?  Weren’t they already the United States?

That's easy for us to say, after nearly 250 years of successful republican government, but no one at the time had any compelling reason to believe that this new government, founded not on principles of monarchy, nor entirely a democracy, but built on republican principles of a representative government several steps removed from the People, yet based on the sovereignty of the People, would succeed.  And they had good reason to be skeptical, in that no other republic since the days of Rome had ever succeeded for any length of time. This crazy new Constitution was doomed to failure.

Because republican democracies don’t last very long.  Absolute monarchies, despotic dictatorships, militaristic empires, those last. 

Now, I already mentioned that there’s an election coming up.  You might have noticed a lot of people on TV, or putting up signs in their front yards, declaring that they want to make America great again.  What they tend to avoid talking about is what made America “great” in the first place, when it was “great,” and what greatness actually means.

Does our greatness stem from our military dominance?  Our responsibility to act as the global police on all international matters in which some form of democracy might be at risk?  Or is American greatness the result of material innovations, technology, manufacturing, research into curing diseases?  Or, as some people seem to think, is it the racism?

I’m going to float here an actual definition for American Greatness, because this is a largely rhetorical essay, and I can do pretty much as I please.  If the greatness of a nation is to be measured by a unique military, social, or cultural yardstick, America’s is based on the simple accomplishment that it managed at its founding, that saved it when the Civil War ripped our country apart, and which we are still living with today:

Our government.

I confess, that’s not a totally original definition.

“Is not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent respect to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?” (Federalist 14, by James Madison)

"I'm a lot less boring when you realize my nickname was Jemmy."

Our country wasn’t founded out of any shared history or common culture.  The people of the different states didn’t actually much like each other, even then.  It was founded instead on ideas.  Ideas of self-government, ideas that the power to govern isn’t bestowed by God on pre-ordained rulers, but rather is derived by the consent of the governed themselves.  Ideas like equality and liberty, which are contradictory ideas, but are unified in our founding documents, particularly the Declaration of Independence.  These ideas, as much as tea and taxes, were at the heart of the revolution.

And that revolution should have failed. Realistically, we never should have won our independence, but we did. And ever after, our new government should have failed.  And it did, leading to the Constitutional Convention.  But somehow, THAT convention, with its republican ideals, intrinsic contradictions, and far-reaching compromises, that convention came up with something that managed to beat the odds, something no other violent overthrow of repressive government has managed before or since.

What did the French Revolution lead to?  Napoleon.  And what about the Roman Republic our founders wanted to emulate?  That ended with Caesar crossing the Rubicon.  Or the Florentine Republic of the sixteenth century, which ended with the infamous Medici family and with Machiavelli in exile writing “The Prince.”  Forward in history, the Russian Revolution led to Lenin and Stalin, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union promised a democratic Russia and gave us Putin.

Revolutions nearly always lead to dictators.

Except for us.  (Well, so far.)

But, why?

Put another way, is there something intrinsic in democratic governments that make them more open to the advances of a dictatorship, and is there something within our own form of government that helps to guard against such a takeover of government, and is that fundamental safeguard or safeguards, still useful today?

According to the Federalist Papers, the major internal danger to the republic was the fighting among parties and factions that could lead to disunion.  But almost as dangerous was the rise of irrational majority movements that disenfranchised the minority parties and factions and thus secured their own power, leading to a kind of tyranny of the majority.  To Hamilton and Madison, the greatest thing we had going from us was our large size and diverse population (their definition of diverse being somewhat removed from our own, but I think the basic thinking remains the same) that would check any populist movements from becoming too powerful.  Having competing factions helped guard against any one man who might decry all others who opposed him and declare that he, alone, was the answer to all of the nation’s problems.  But too many factions, fracturing the nation and competing for power at the expense of each other, without a larger unifying identity, could also be dangerous. Public opinion is easily swayed, and a particularly strong, vocal faction took take power away from other factions by claiming any number of prejudiced and misguided notions.  So the power of the people need to be removed from the people by degrees. So that by having three coequal branches of government that checked each other plus a freedom of speech and press that guaranteed a fourth check, the nation could effectively prevent the popular power from being vested too much in any one man.

However, it is an open question if those same protections still exist in our modern political landscape.  When we sure as hell still need them.

Our political culture, which is designed to be deliberative, intentionally slow and bureaucratic, so as to avoid the whims of temporary inflammations of public opinion, but instead to work for the public good, which are often two different, sometimes opposite, objects, is competing with the internet and 24/7 news cycles, where we constantly demand instant satisfaction and put every public act under several microscopes at once, each seeing it from a different angle and reaching a different conclusion which must be THE truth of the moment.  And we all have all the mouthpieces for our own opinions and prejudices that we could want.  So that a minority of opinions can be disguised as a full-blown public movement.

And in this moment, moving toward our next election, we now have a deadlocked Congress, a deadlocked Supreme Court, and most interestingly, a major party candidate courting special interests in order to give the appearance of appealing to some kind of vocal majority, inciting people with rhetoric about how our government is the problem, how immigrants are a threat, and how he alone is the answer.

"Fun Fact:  Today, I'd be considered an illegal immigrant."

Everything about this scenario would have sounded alarming to Hamilton and Madison.

In fact, in a true democracy, tied directly to the voice of the majority, to the whims of public opinion, this would be a truly existential threat to freedom.  It is still a danger, though one our country has been built to withstand.  The real threat is if public opinion is mistaken for public interest, mistrust of others is allowed to be codified as law, and a small faction is allowed to disenfranchise other factions, giving rise to self-perpetuating loops of bigotry and prejudice.  Such is the case with Voter ID laws and voter registration requirements in which specific demographics are targeted and voting made more difficult, all in the name of reducing non-existed voter fraud, but is actually based on prevailing fears of people who are different, somehow, from those currently in power. And if we constantly think of each other as different from ourselves, instead of as part of the same society, the same People, little can stand in the way of such a threat.

Our Founding Fathers were absolutely clear that our fractured groups of Americans needed more than anything else to unite behind a single union of identity.  We had to move from These United States to THE United States.  From plural to singular.  Through Unity, not of party or opinion, but a unity that embraces a diversity of, and respect for, our sometimes contradictory opinions and perspectives.  At a time when all of politics seems to consist of shouting down any contrary opinion, a fuller consideration of ideas is freedom’s most potent defense.  

Or, in the words of George Washington, "The unity of government which constitutes you one people...is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your peace; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize."

If we remember that the people who disagree with us are also citizens of this country, worthy of its freedoms, and dedicated to its founding principles, that makes the whole country stronger.

We have defied our earliest critics.  We have defied even history itself, and have created, however unlikely, an example of representative government that can withstand both blatant incompetence and deceitful corruption to serve as a voice for the sovereign people, from whom our federal government derives its power.  And by holding ourselves to the core principles of Unity and Representative Government (or, in Lincoln’s words, “of the people, by the people, and for the people”), we will continue to endure.

And that, in short, is the starting point of American Exceptionalism.  The authors of the Federalist Papers understood this.  They predicted this; that if our country could survive, to hold itself together for long enough, we could, by our mere continued existence, serve as an example that yes, this kind of government can actually work.

In other words (and somewhat ironically), we can “Make America Great Again” by being “Stronger Together.”