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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm very good and in part, I'm excited once again, because today's podcast episode is about a source material that I have been studying and using in my various courses for probably most of my higher education, if you will, career life, etc.
N. Rodgers: For thousands of years since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Rocks were a feasibility study.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Because I am that old.
N. Rodgers: Listeners, we're introducing a little series within a series within our podcasts, you just roll with it. It's like we have a plan but we don't, we have a semi plan. One of our plans here is to talk about some of the Federalist Papers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But the first question we have to ask is, who the heck are the Federalists and who are the Anti-Federalists? Why were they fussing around and writing papers? Part of this is the fact that we're also going to be looking at some of the early documents of the beginning of the country and how we developed the governmental system. Everybody likes to say, "The founders thought" and then they proceed to tell you what they think the founders thought.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: So we're trying to dig in on that a little bit and see, what did the founders write? What did they put to paper?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Or some other medium, that would let us know what they were trying to get at.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners in part, this series of episodes take us back to why Nia and I wanted to do this podcast..
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which is to look at government and/or governing documents. The Federalist Papers, in part help explain what were some of the thoughts of the founders. But Nia's question is a good one, because the Federalist Papers were.
N. Rodgers: Why should we care what these people wrote? Who are these people?
J. Aughenbaugh: Who are these people? The Federalist Papers in short were a collection of essays, 85 of them, that were written to defend the then proposed US Constitution. The idea behind them was to respond to specific criticisms offered by a group that Nia mentioned just a few moments ago, the Anti-Federalists.
N. Rodgers: This is prior to the Constitution being ratified.
J. Aughenbaugh: Ratified. That's right.
N. Rodgers: So this is the discussion that they're having.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The other side is trying to convince the other side.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because you had the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia the summer of 1787. They produced a proposed constitution, and almost immediately there were critics in all 13 colonies.
N. Rodgers: No, so they were political critics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Right.
N. Rodgers: There were people complaining and whining about politics. I think not talking making that up.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, I remind my students, do you know if you think we live in a critical time, 2023 is not brand new guys and we're good.
N. Rodgers: The only thing that's due about now is the speed of the transmission of the ideas.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: The actual grumpiness about government goes back to the Romans.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's hard wired into American political culture.
N. Rodgers: It's a good thing. Having these discussions is a good thing. That's part of why these papers have survived.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's that they are useful to this discussion.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Anti-Federalists produced critiques in essays, in newspapers. By the way, again, if you think media outlets today are biased on one side of the larger spectrum or the other, newspapers in late 18th century America, were quite clearly biased because certain newspapers were Anti-Federalists, certain newspapers were Federalists. Heck, some of the founding fathers actually publish their own newspapers. See Benjamin Franklin.
N. Rodgers: We are going to get to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We'll get to some of those examples and have them up for you on guide. By the way, this series will not be run back-to-back episodes. They're going to be sprinkled in with other things that we're going to be talking about. Of course, Art in the News will still feature things that are happening right now.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Anti-Federalists wrote under two pseudo names, Brutus or Keto.
N. Rodgers: To Brute.
J. Aughenbaugh: With restoreance.
N. Rodgers: Oh, Keto hence the Keto center?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I did not know that's where that came from.
J. Aughenbaugh: In response, the Federalists published under a pseudonym. Theirs was Publius, who was named after the Romans, Senator Publius Valerius Poplicola.
N. Rodgers: You get the idea of public.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Very instrumental.
N. Rodgers: The people.
J. Aughenbaugh: The people, the founding of the Roman Republic.
N. Rodgers: So at the time they weren't called The Federalist Papers?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: They were called the Publius papers.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was funny because there wasn't necessarily a concerted effort. It wasn't really well-organized. The Federalist Papers basically responded to specific critiques provided by Brutus and, or Keto and we now know.
N. Rodgers: That's how editorial pages work now, somebody will publish an editorial and then somebody else will say, oh, no. Here is what's wrong with your argument.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: In a polite way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You're not trying to be personal. You wrote that argument because you're ugly and stupid, which is not what you say. What you say is you wrote that argument and here is what you missed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Here's what you missed.
N. Rodgers: Missed these factors or you missed this piece of information or whatever, you have not addressed this thing, because that makes a better argument. We strive here to suggest to people that a better argument is made on the facts. You can't pull into people's personalities. That's not how this should work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you see this with.
N. Rodgers: But they were willing to say some pretty ugly stuff about it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But what was remarkable was both the essays written by the Anti-Federalists. I'm just going to go with Brutus or those written by Publius. This is high order argumentation, because the fundamental argument made by the Anti-Federalists was that the proposed constitution would vest extensive power in the national government. Then one of the reasons why the colonists fought the Revolutionary War was to avoid living under such a strong central government.
N. Rodgers: No more kings. But can I just point out, these arguments are happening in public for a reason. They want to convince regular citizens of the veracity of their argument. They're not trying to convince each other because these people died in the war. We will get to the names of individuals later, but you're not going to unfederalists. Some people are Federalist, other people who are already in those camps. What you're trying to do is convince voters.
J. Aughenbaugh: These essays were propaganda guys.
N. Rodgers: They were intended to convince voters.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: How to think in a certain way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and I know that the word propaganda has a negative connotation in modern usage, but if you look at what propaganda meant back then was you are trying to persuade the undecided, the voters.
N. Rodgers: The way you did that was editorial writing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right.
N. Rodgers: The way we do that now is television and TikTok and ads. Think of these as very long ads for either side.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who was Publius? Well, actually Publius is comprised of three authors and the authors were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Historians basically agree that it was Hamilton who came up with the idea for the series of essays. The reason why was Hamilton was located in the state of New York. The Anti-Federalists were very active in New York. Very active. They were publishing the Anti-Federalists essays in various newspapers in New York. Hamilton was just like, okay, we need to respond and he convinced John Jay and James Madison to work with him. Now there were two other individuals, that were asked by Hamilton to participate in writing these Federalists responses. Governor Morris from Pennsylvania and William Duer. Morris declined. Duer wrote three essays, and Hamilton didn't think they were of good quality, so he never published them, standard Hamilton.
N. Rodgers: Well. Yeah, I'm the smartest guy in the room.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Federalists essays are numbered 85, Nia. Most historians agree, and I say most, there is some disagreement, but most have concluded that Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85. John Jay only wrote five because he was frequently ill at that time. Then Madison wrote 29. You might be thinking, okay, what's the big deal about these three? Well, these were three of the most prominent founding fathers in our country's history.
N. Rodgers: Hamilton goes on to be the first treasurer of the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: John Jay goes on to be the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Madison goes on to be president.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, served in Congress, became president.
N. Rodgers: These are not trifling individuals.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: These are not Nia and Aughie, writing essays in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. These are seminal figures of the founding of the country.
J. Aughenbaugh: They basically hammered out these 85 essays in less than 14 months Nia.
N. Rodgers: Wow. They would get tenure under those rules.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was just shocking.
N. Rodgers: That's a lot to write in a short while. But they probably felt a certain pressure of time. They needed to get this thing ratified, they needed to get moving because we got to get the country moving. I'm sure that the compressed time had to do with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, for instance, the Anti-Federalist sentiment was not just in the state of New York. Many historians have again acknowledged that there was strong Anti-Federalists sentiment in most of the colonies.
N. Rodgers: Well, they just fought a war to get out from under all that mess and a lot of people died.
J. Aughenbaugh: According to most political scientists, it wasn't until the Federalists promise to add a bill of rights that many Anti-Federalists begrudgingly voted to approve the new constitution.
N. Rodgers: The author of the bill of rights is James Madison.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Again, I would argue that the bill of rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution, are in fact what almost every American, it's the only thing they can identify about the constitution, other than if they listened to this podcast, they know the Commerce Clause. But like if you ask your average American what's in the constitution, they are going to start with the amendments.
J. Aughenbaugh: The bill of rights.
N. Rodgers: It's not addition in the sense of, we'll just throw those on there. It's like, no those are the things that people actually think the constitution means.
J. Aughenbaugh: To me, what's also fascinating about these three authors is that, John Jay served a brief time as Chief Justice. He's also the one who negotiated the Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain. But John Jay eventually went back to New York to become Governor, I want to say in New York. But Madison and Hamilton quickly parted ways once the constitution gets ratified and we have our first president. Hamilton goes to work in the Washington administration. Madison ends up siding more with Thomas Jefferson. Remember, Thomas Jefferson did not like major segments of the US Constitution.
N. Rodgers: He thought it was too federal. Wasn't the Anti-Federalists?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, he was an Anti-Federalist. This was in the writing of the Federalist Papers. You see a rare moment of Hamilton and Madison being in sync.
N. Rodgers: Bipartisanship.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Then it breaks down as soon as the need goes away. The bipartisanship breaks down. Where have we heard that before?
J. Aughenbaugh: Once we start running the Constitution.
N. Rodgers: Then we start fighting again.
J. Aughenbaugh: The devil's in the details. Woodrow Wilson infamously said it's far easier to write a constitution than it is to run one, right?
N. Rodgers: Agreed. I'm not really surprised that you see that breakdown. What you have is a high-pressure situation where they work together and we see that in modern congress, a high-pressure situation comes, 9/11 is a perfect example of that. You got complete alignment from people to get to USA Patriot. I don't know, I think there was one vote against. Was it one or two votes against?
J. Aughenbaugh: In the Senate, Russ Feingold from Wisconsin, I believe, was the only one who voted against the USA
N. Rodgers: I think there was somebody in the house but generally speaking, right under massive pressure you get this alignment, and then as soon as the pressure lets up the alignment cracks because they are aligned on a topic. They are not aligned permanently forever on their goals and so it makes sense because that's how politics I suspect works. Is that you can say look, we both hate this thing so let's work on this thing together. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then immediately after that, you're like, I didn't really like you. I'm moving on.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you think about it, if you put Hamilton and Madison on a scale where both of them would agree, was that the Articles of Confederation, the government that was formed after the Revolutionary War, both would agree that it was not strong enough. Where they differed was that Hamilton actually believed in the necessity of a strong national government, just in general, and Madison was much more of a skeptic. And you're going to see this listeners when we delve into some of the most prominent or well-known Federalist Papers in a future podcast episode because it's Madison who's writing about things like checks and balances, in separation of powers as auxiliary checks on government. And Hamilton frequently wrote the Federalist papers that talked about why you needed a strong national government or why the judiciary, we had nothing to fear from a strong judiciary.
N. Rodgers: Excuse me, Mr. Hamilton, we'd like to have a discussion.
J. Aughenbaugh: And that's going to be pretty funny because, Nia, when we talk about those specific Federalist Papers, you and I will probably conclude that some of the predictions or projections of Publius did not materialize or work as accurate as they perhaps hoped.
N. Rodgers: Well, and the thing here is, can we just say that you know how you can tell Madison from Nostradamus is Nostradamus has a lot more letters on the Scrabble. They are very different people and none of the founders, brilliant thinkers, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin. These guys who were visionary weren't without fault and they also couldn't see the future. They didn't have a crystal ball. They had no way of knowing. I personally think they had no way of knowing how big the United States was just by sheer size alone. Think about it, most of these guys had never been passed Kentucky and had no idea how far the West really went.
J. Aughenbaugh: Into that point, just that example, Madison thought that the sheer size of the United States would minimize how powerful the federal government would get.
N. Rodgers: Silly him. But in some ways, he's actually accurate. There are some things you can't do federally.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you can also make the plausible argument because the country got so big.
N. Rodgers: You needed a federal government.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because in some problems got across states or regions that you need a much stronger federal government.
N. Rodgers: Right, without a department of transportation to maintain the highways that go across the nation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You could be driving on a really well-maintained road.
N. Rodgers: And then all of a sudden.
J. Aughenbaugh: You could end up in Virginia and feel like.
N. Rodgers: What happened?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm never delivering any goods. I'm never visiting anybody in this state. But what's fascinating about the Federalist Papers, Nia, and you were making this broader point. In part, they give the background in the context to major provisions or sections of the US Constitution because longtime listeners of this podcast well know Nia and I forever have joked that the constitution lacks something really important, a glossary of terms.
N. Rodgers: We could have used a dictionary to go along with it. What did you mean by it?
J. Aughenbaugh: To a certain extent the reason why the Federalist Papers are still read today. Heck, for that matter, they're still referenced in debates that you see on the Supreme Court, I mean, the Bruen case.
N. Rodgers: Is what the founders meant by.
J. Aughenbaugh: Meant by the Second Amendment.
N. Rodgers: Whatever it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay, case from last year, 2022. Clarence Thomas who wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court, referenced the Federalist Papers. And this was a document that was written 230 plus years ago, The Federalist Papers were, right?
N. Rodgers: Right, but if you're trying to get the context of the constitution, reading the Federalist Papers is an important way to do that. And reading some of the essays they're responding to. You need both side. You need civil discourse. But sorry, every once in a while, I think drinking game,
J. Aughenbaugh: But to your point one of my mentors was John Rohr. And John Rohr oftentimes said Nia, that if you really want to understand a nation's government, you can't focus just on the winners in a policy debate or a constitutional debate. You have to read those who "lost." And one of the most eye-opening courses, Nia, I ever took as a doctoral student was a course with Rohr where we read both the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. Because the Anti-Federalists made a lot of good arguments. They made a lot of good arguments. You mean things about state sovereignty, government is best that is closest to the people. We hear those arguments today.
N. Rodgers: And many of us believe things like, why don't they just get off my back and let me do what I need to do. There's a certain level of that that a lot of people, just regular folks think, I don't know why we have to have this much intervention. But they perceive as overreach.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or many of us even to this day believe that the levels of government that have the most impact on most Americans' daily lives are local and state government.
N. Rodgers: That's right. That's why Aughie and I always push for you to go vote for your school board, and your mayor, and your city manager.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right.
N. Rodgers: All those people who you need them to do to keep the road smooth, to keep the schools running.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oversight of the local police department.
N. Rodgers: Making sure the dumps stay open.
N. Rodgers: I'm going to need you to take the garbage out of here. That's in the normal, ask the French how it goes. Sanitation workers stop picking up stuff because that's regularly who goes on strike in Paris. It paralyzes Paris in about six hours. Because that's a lot of garbage that's just sitting around.
J. Aughenbaugh: At the time we are recording this podcast episode, nurses in the state of New York went on strike for a day.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. A little bit back.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Okay. They went on strike. It wasn't the federal government that stepped in and addressed their concerns. It was the state and the local government. Let's face it, if you were getting sick in New York, you wanted those nurses to come back to work.
N. Rodgers: Right. Fix it. Do whatever we have to do to fix it.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, it was the Anti-Federalists that argued for our Bill of Rights. As you just pointed out Nia, the one thing about the US Constitution, most US citizens can go ahead and say, well I have a right to do X. It's because there was opposition.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was opposition to the proposed constitution because the original.
N. Rodgers: The opposition won. The opposition forced that, to be put into the Constitution so that you do a right to free speech, or you do have the right to have bear arms. Or the right to a speedy trial. The things that people know that they have, to right to be advised of your rights.
J. Aughenbaugh: Rights by an attorney. We can make jokes all we want about attorneys, but if you ever get arrested by the cops and the state is saying that they're going to bring you to trial.
N. Rodgers: Get an attorney.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You know who your bestest buddy is?
N. Rodgers: Your attorney.
J. Aughenbaugh: Whoever your attorney is.
N. Rodgers: That's right. By the way, just as a side note for our listeners, if you get arrested, don't talk to the cops, ask for a lawyer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Just shut up.
N. Rodgers: It doesn't matter what you did or didn't do, even if you didn't do it, don't try to explain.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Don't talk.
N. Rodgers: Say I'd like to speak to a lawyer please and I'm not going to answer any questions until a lawyer gets here.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're not being anti-cop.
N. Rodgers: People make mistakes, even when they're innocent.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They will say, I couldn't have done that because I was on the other side of town robbing a jewelry store and you're like, see, really?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Just be quiet.
N. Rodgers: Don't say anything, be polite. Always be polite to the police officers, but don't say anything. Anyway, that's a side note for me in order to pass on our wisdom.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay, yes.
N. Rodgers: Our harder [inaudible] which we won't get into here, but yeah, you're right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Advice but to your larger point, by paying attention to the arguments of the Anti-Federalists, you can understand, what were problems when the Constitution was being devised.
N. Rodgers: That's another part of what we want to explore here when we're talking about when we pick a Federalist Paper. Let's say we're going to talk about Number 10. We're going to tell you what the Anti-Federalists' argument was, or what they were publishing, what they were trying to get at. Then what the Federalist argument was and if there is background of the state or the state of affairs of politics at that time, we will bring that into it so that you can understand. It's a two-sided or multi-sided argument in some cases.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's not as simple as the Federalists won. They did win, but as Aughie saying, only sort of, most politics, there's never a clean win. You always have to give up something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You have to make a concession.
N. Rodgers: You have to compromise. That's the other thing is modern politics, I just need to opine for a second. Modern politics talks about the founders, but they don't take away the most important lesson of the founders which was compromise.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: You think that Jefferson didn't think that he knew exactly what we should do and how we should run a government and get out of my way I'm the smartest guy in the room. Of course, he felt that way. You know, who else felt that way? Madison. They both had to give a little in order to get what they wanted.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or to think about, for instance, Jefferson rail about how strong the executive was in the proposed constitution.
N. Rodgers: Can you imagine him now? Anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then, remember Nia, he then runs for the office he frequently railed against, becomes president, and then he negotiates the Louisiana Purchase, and then turns to the Congress and says, here's the bill, you guys pay for it. I mean, he flip-flopped.
N. Rodgers: Of course, he did.
J. Aughenbaugh: Today, if a politician goes ahead and changes their mind or works with the other side, you are a blank in name only.
N. Rodgers: You're a traitor to the party.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're unfaithful to our principles. You're just like, do you guys understand that most of our founders? Had times to where they were, ''unfaithful to their principles.'' James Madison went from being the staunchest defender of the US Constitution to becoming member of the opposition party, the Democratic-Republicans.
N. Rodgers: Writing the amendments.
J. Aughenbaugh: Writing the amendments.
N. Rodgers: Here let me fix some of this stuff. That doesn't mean that he didn't have integrity. That's the problem that I think people now, talk about in politics is a lack of integrity. It is not a lack of integrity to compromise. In fact, it is one of the highest virtues of integrity is to compromise because what you have to do in order to compromise is listen to the other person.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: You have to listen to what they're saying and you have to recognize they are not evil. They are not trying to destroy you, or out to destroy the country or whatever. This idea that somehow somebody who's just purely bad, there are very few purely bad people in the world. Almost all of them are serial killers and psychopaths. They're not the person sitting next to you in Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. When you compromise, you have to listen and try to figure out where there's common ground.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. What can we agree on?
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, you imagine how much integrity that imposes upon you to go ahead and say, we don't agree on a lot, but this we can let's do something about that.
N. Rodgers: I would urge, if any lawmakers listening to this podcast, first of all, I'd be amazed, but also I would urge you to consider, I mean, if you can't start anywhere else, start with gravity. You both like gravity. Well, what else did we both like? Maybe you have to start that simple. But I don't know, I refuse to believe that there's somebody in most situations, not all situations. I don't know that I could have found common ground with Idi Amin.
J. Aughenbaugh: You got a good example. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: But I mean, very few people are Idi Amin. There's a reason we know his name. There's some reason that he stands out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because he was so evil and so badly mistreated his people.
N. Rodgers: Right. But barring somebody like that, let's just assume that the other person is not Idi Amin and roll from there. Let's assume that the other person has good intention, that they really are trying to do what they think is the right thing to do, and then work the problem from there. I think that that's what these Federalist Papers show us. I don't think that Alexander Hamilton thought that Thomas Jefferson was the most evil creature alive. I think he thought Thomas Jefferson was wrong thinking about certain things. Then he would put up an argument to say, what about this? What about that?
J. Aughenbaugh: If Hamilton was here today, if we did actually force him to go ahead and say, who do you think the most evil person is in American politics? Probably he would have said Aaron Burr, who by the way, was a member of his political party. Then who killed him in a door. Again, this is politics. The person who gives a false speech today that basically says the bill you sponsored, is completed another trash might be at your chamber door, your office door tomorrow saying, hey, I want to propose a bill about X, will you work with me?
N. Rodgers: You seem like a guy who would sign off.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Will you cosponsor with me?
N. Rodgers: If you're going to hold grudges.
J. Aughenbaugh: The only thing you're going to focus on is the false speech from the day before where very same person went ahead and eviscerated you. You're not going to get anything done. You're not going to get anything passed. The other thing about the Federalist Papers that I always enjoy, is the sense of, that the people who are writing them, because they were trying to explain some really different ways of governing ourselves.
N. Rodgers: Let us think for just a moment. This is the first democracy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I think of is the modern world. Modern relative being 1800s.
J. Aughenbaugh: Post enlightenment.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. This is long after the Greeks tried this experiment were like, hey, maybe we could try that again. Everybody else in the world was under a monarchy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Here they are trying to come up with a very different way of doing this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's pretty amazing really when you think about the visionary component of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and the things that they assumed or the things that they hoped for, the things that they predicted. I mean, and some of it didn't materialize, some of their assumptions were way off.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. That's how it happens.
J. Aughenbaugh: That happens. Can we recognize it? Can we go ahead and say, well, that didn't play out and that's a chief defect, how do we address this?
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, there's no shame in saying, "Hey, I made a mistake." But this is now a problem because if you don't make mistakes, you don't learn and grow.
N. Rodgers: I would be willing to bet just from roughly what I know, and I don't know nearly as much as you do. Correct me if I'm wrong, that the federalists assumed that the Congress would not cede power.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: In the way that they have modernly done, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In their ideal vision, it's like the ideal vision of communism. The ideal vision of communism is beautiful, the idea that people will put in it equally, and take out equally and work together, and there will be health and safety for all. That's a wonderful ideal. It walks right up until you get to humans. Then all of a sudden, humans screw that up, screw up that ideal by being greedy, by being personal, difficult and petty. The way humans are. Because you get more than one of us in the room and it's going to be like that. At some point there's going to be a fight.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's funny you mentioned that because we're going to discuss this listeners in a future podcast episode in Federalist 51, which talks about separation of powers and checks and balances. It was written by Madison. Madison goes ahead and says, "Based on what we've seen in the past, we know people who have positions of government authority are going to be ambitious. They assumed members of Congress would want to push back." They actually assumed, if you will, a certain version of human nature that Nia, you and I are both very comfortable with. What they can figure on was that in an entire institution.
N. Rodgers: Would rollover.
J. Aughenbaugh: Made up a very "ambitious people" were basically just go ahead and say the Office of President. Here's the form. You do whatever you want, really?
N. Rodgers: We're going to talk about that more with 51, but it does show this idealized, I mean, they were thinking in terms of ideal government.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: How they thought an ideal government would work. Sometimes they were right and sometimes they were tragically wrong but the Republic has survived. They must have done something, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Some of it was by luck.
N. Rodgers: Somewhat was luck. Some of it was the right group of people at the right time together. Think about the circumstances that it would take to draw that group of people educated in that way and thinking in those terms together in order to write something like the Constitution. I wonder now, could we write the Constitution now? Do we have the philosophical thinkers, or would we argue so much that we would never get anything written? I know that part of that is but if I lock you in a room in Philadelphia in the summer wearing lots of wool, I might be able to force the circumstances a little bit. By the same token, you're thinking about a group of people who were putting new cloth like this is not a thing that had been known in their world.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were educated in certain ways that what we see in many educational systems in the United States today, things like philosophy and religion "in ethics", those things have been replaced with an emphasis on very practical skill sets in learning for a particular economy or predicted economy. I don't know if you would have that requisite background because again, they all had exposure to not only these ideas, but of a certain lived experience. That's the other thing. How do you translate a lived experience to where you can find common ground because you and I could, for instance, can go through the same traumatic events, but our response might be greatly different. Or how do you find that common ground because in part they were all responding to colonial rule, a revolutionary war and then the Articles Confederation.
N. Rodgers: Did all of them fight or have participation in the Revolutionary War? Were they of the right age to have done that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, but some of them, for instance, Madison was he participated. Somebody was so small. He was a small person. Hamilton definitely did. Hamilton was one of Washington's most trusted aides. Many of those in the Anti-Federalists who wrote the Anti-Federalists essays participated in the war. Of course, their reaction to fighting in the war was we just fought this war so that we would not have to live under a strong central government. Again how do you respond to the same lived experience? It might not be the same.
N. Rodgers: We're excited about this series because we're excited to drop in these episodes every so often about the Federalist Papers. We're excited about the Anti-Federalists and what they had to say and when they were right and when they were not right. We're going to try to be as honest, even though we sound all glowy and excited about the Federalist Papers, we're also going to try to be honest about the stuff they screwed up and when and where they were wrong because that's part of learning from history. The founders were not perfect in any way. I think that what I'm excited about this series is I think the Federalist Papers have taken on a mystique. They are not taught practically in many high school or like they mention them. But they don't teach about the practicality of it in many high school and college classes. They've taken on this mystical and they're not mystical, their arguments. You can take a part in argument and say, this is a good part of an argument, this is bad part of an argument. I think I'm looking forward to that because I think that sometimes they've taken on this like unassailable.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, we cannot criticize them. This is a sacred text. No, it's not a sacred text, okay?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. This podcast will never pull apart the sacred texts of any religions because that's not our business nor our job.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: We are more than happy to pull apart the texts of political regimes across the world if we come into them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Give me a law and I'll go ahead and point out some just really terrible sections.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: What were they flicking. Nia, you've quite obviously demonstrated during the life of those podcasts, that there are stuff that I teach or gets discussed by politicians and bureaucrats. You're just like, well, wait a minute here, they thought what.
N. Rodgers: I get a little surprised sometimes. Really? Imagine there'll be some of that for me because I have not read all of the Federalist Papers yet, although I'm committing to reading them before we discuss them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: We will link to them on the research guide as we discuss them. We will link to them and we will link to whatever relevant article they're responding to so that people know what we're talking about and they can go read them for themselves.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie. I really appreciate you opening this door for us because I think that it's going to be an interesting thing for people who are interested in this. If you're not, we'll warn you ahead of time by titling it Federalist Paper so that you know, you can skip that episode if you're not particularly interested in the Federalist Papers. We don't want to try to make you listen to something you're not interested in. We will put that in the titles of each of them so that, you know that's not what I'm interested in hearing or I just want what I'm interested in hearing.
J. Aughenbaugh: That aside, but also long-time listeners do remember, there have been other episodes that you may have stumbled on, clicked on, and you just been like, rarely are going to discuss waters of the United States.
N. Rodgers: Zip codes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Zip codes. You may have been at least entertained if not educated.
N. Rodgers: It's true. You can stick with us. We'd love to have you along for the ride. Thank you, Aughie. I appreciate it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Nia.
You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.