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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 fine because listeners, we are continuing our little mini-series on what topic, Nia?
N. Rodgers: On the Federalist Papers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I would like to read something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. But before you read something, let's get just a little bit of background. In a previous podcast episode, we talked about the origin and who wrote the Federalist Papers and why they'd been important throughout our country's history. Then we promised that we would delve into some of the better known Federalist Papers.
N. Rodgers: Today we're going to do Federalist Paper number 10.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay.
N. Rodgers: But I want to read from the Anti-Federalist because remember we said that we would tell you what the fuss was about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Anti-Federalist SA 10, which by the way, turns out they match in numbers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Isn't that convenient?
N. Rodgers: It is rather handy, which appeared in the Maryland Gazette and Baltimore Advertiser on March 18th, 1788.
J. Aughenbaugh: I love the titles of old newspapers.
N. Rodgers: Every Maryland Gazette and Baltimore Advertiser, because that must have taken up half of the top page to start with. You don't have to have a lot of news because you got a big old title. It sounds like this title was written by Yoda, but just bear with me. The preservation of parties public liberty depends, which I do think it does sound a little bit like Yoda. The reservation of parties, public liberty depends.
J. Aughenbaugh: Either way, just absolutely poor sentence construction, very passive.
N. Rodgers: But listen to this quote from this, which I think was really cool, that on the preservation of parties, public liberty depends. Whenever men are unanimous on the great public questions, whenever there is but one party, freedom ceases and despotism commences.
N. Rodgers: Object of a free and wise people should be so to balance parties, that from the weakness of all you may be governed by the moderation of the combined judgments of the whole, not tyrannized over by the blind passions of a few individuals. Now, first of all, I love the idea that I could feel tyrannized over because tyranny is such a great word. We were talking about the fact that this is propaganda.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yes, very dramatic.
N. Rodgers: Build the passion.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Whenever men are unanimous on great public questions, freedom ceases and despotism commences. We will have a despot, and they will rule over us because that's what they had just fought a war to get rid of. King George, who was, by all accounts, a despot or by most accounts, I suppose his account isn't that, but everybody else's account.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the language of my daughter, he was not a nice person.
N. Rodgers: He was not a nice person. They were trying to avoid that by saying if we have a whole bunch of people making the rules, moderation will be what comes out of that because you'll get rid of the extremes. They were worried about the extremes. They were worried about if you had a federal government and it was run by a nutcase.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then what's the difference between that and King George?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: So it's not a bad argument to start with, it's not an unfounded fear.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it's not an unfounded fear. The response in Federalist 10, written by James Madison, actually goes ahead and concedes one of the assumptions of Anti-Federalists number 10 because James Madison does concede in Federalist number 10, Nia, that there is the danger in a democracy of what Madison referred to as the mischief of factions.
N. Rodgers: That's another great phrase.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's another great phrase. The way Madison described it is you would have groups of people who would come together and form this overwhelming tyranny and then it would harm minorities. At that time, Nia, statistically, the minority was well educated land-owning men.
N. Rodgers: That's a fair point. They were in charge of things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But they still would have been the minority.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're afraid.
N. Rodgers: Okay. So he was a little concerned for his own people.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then Madison goes on and says, where the Anti-Federalist get this wrong is that the Anti-Federalists want to make it really difficult for factions to ever occur. Madison says, well, we know that in general, historically.
N. Rodgers: That's not realistic.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's not realistic because people are going to want to come together.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say, have you ever met humans?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They would break themselves into factions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But then those factions will then try to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Convince meld.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Whatever, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If you get enough people in the factions who say, these rich, land-owning white guys, we could do without them. They could overwhelm the minority.
J. Aughenbaugh: What Madison said was instead of trying to prevent those fractions from occurring, we should mitigate their effects.
N. Rodgers: Work with human nature. The constitution should work with human nature, not try to change human nature.
J. Aughenbaugh: Madison's response was how do we mitigate against the mischief of factions? This is where he gives the defense of separation of powers and federalism because he said it would make it really difficult for factions to come together and exercise all of the great power given to the government in this new constitution because there are structural devices like separation of powers in federalism that would allow groups to check one another, right?
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: The example, Nia, I gave in my class is let's just say for instance, we have a congressional election and an election of a president where a whole bunch of people get elected and they want to fundamentally change social security, because they're concerned that it's going to be bankrupt in about 15 years.
N. Rodgers: We're concerned about that, too, but anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: These newly elected people decide to pass significant changes to social security as we currently know it. According to Madison, those who would like to keep social security as is have multiple opportunities to influence those policy changes. They can do it in Congress, they could try to influence the president, they could go to the courts and claim that it's either illegal or unconstitutional. Because social security, like most federal government entitlement programs, are administered on a daily basis by the states, they could try to influence how those policy changes are administered or implemented at the state level. That's how you control factions. You don't do what the Anti-Federalists would propose because the Anti-Federalists say we have this new constitution that would basically allow factions to control us, to elect a despot, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Madison and goes, yeah, there's that danger in a democracy. But instead of trying to change human behavior, let's try to mitigate the effects of human nature.
N. Rodgers: You can elect a despot, but he doesn't actually have the full despotic powers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That you might fear he would have.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because what we've done is put checks on that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: By the way, can I read a phrase from the Federalist 10?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: "Sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens." I'm just saying if we had people who wrote like that now in government, people would watch C-SPAN with popcorn. It wouldn't be like the unfortunate election of the speaker that we saw where people were watching because it was like a train wreck.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, no, this would be like.
N. Rodgers: They would be watching like.
J. Aughenbaugh: You said what?
N. Rodgers: Wow, that is so cool, I got to write that down so I can use that on somebody later, it's that kind of thing. I love the phrasing of the men of the time and what that shows is their education. All of the people who wrote both the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists were highly educated individuals who had studied philosophy, they had studied history, they had studied civics, as it were, not quite civics the way we think of it now.
J. Aughenbaugh: They studied the classics. They were familiar with Plato, Aristotle.
N. Rodgers: Almost all of them knew at least some Latin.
J. Aughenbaugh: They just aid up the great political philosophers of continental Europe, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: You just read that quote. That quote is an acknowledgment by Madison that he could agree with at least part of the anti-federalist. Because like the anti-federalist, Madison feared the tyranny of the majority. That the majority could be convinced to go ahead and select despotic rulers who would then trample on the rights of individuals.
N. Rodgers: He didn't try to pooh-pooh that argument as being unrealistic or not cool. He didn't say to his opponent, well, you think that because you're dumb. He did all because you're crazy or because you're left-wing or right-wing or woke or whatever. Whatever the thing is that you want to accuse somebody of. He didn't do that. He said, you know what, you're right that what we could end up with is we could end up with the tyranny of the majority. We could end up with people who feel trampled on and stomped all over. But what we have to do is, one, trust in the process which is the Constitution. We have to trust in what we're doing in there in terms of balancing the powers. We also have to trust that human nature will go so far and then it will stop going that far because as we know with despots, they are regularly overthrown. They're regularly murdered in their sleep. It's a tough thing being a despot. You have to be careful about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because you can't go too far.
N. Rodgers: You can't really rest at night. How many years did Idi Amin not get any sleep at all because he was waiting for somebody to kill him in his sleep. Because again, human nature will balance out eventually.
J. Aughenbaugh: The other thing that Madison pointed out as a safeguard Nia and you probably noticed this in the research notes. Madison predicted that the United States would grow so large that there would be such a wide array of disparate geographic, religious, socio-economic interest that it would be really difficult for a majority faction to come together and dominate.
N. Rodgers: How prescient was that? Sorry, go ahead.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, how many times Nia have we talked about in this podcast about how difficult it is to govern the United States in the 21st century because the country, one, is geographically large. But in terms of varied interests, you travel enough in the United States and you have even a remotely functioning curiosity. You're just going to be awestruck at the great political, social, economic, food, music, the interests are so varied.
N. Rodgers: The language in this country is varied.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Try that fuzzy brown drink in bottles. Soda, pop, coke. Call everything a coke, that's what happens in the South. Give me a coke and what you mean is a brown fizzy drink of some kind. You get that kind of thing, we don't even agree on basic language for a sugary drink none of us should be drinking anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or think about the different variations of pizza in the United States.
N. Rodgers: Please. The New York thing that you fold in half, the Chicago thing that's about three feet deep. All the different and the infighting of those communities. That's not pizza. This is pizza. Of course the Italians are like, we don't even know what this is. This is not even a thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: What have you done?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Now you're just making stuff up.
J. Aughenbaugh: I almost want to quote the Godfather from Godfather Part 1, "Look what they've done to my boy."
N. Rodgers: It's huge variations across the nation. In some ways that's a good thing because it keeps us from getting too nationalistically bonded in the sense of Germany in 1939. It prevents that kind of thing because we just have so much discussion in this country and arguing. Thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it does make it difficult.
N. Rodgers: For us to build a consensus.
J. Aughenbaugh: Build a consensus.
N. Rodgers: Something really bad has to happen for us to have a consensus.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has to be a major economic crisis.
N. Rodgers: Like the United States before World War II was very much factionalized about whether we should join World War II or not. You get Pearl Harbor and that goes away. Because everybody is like, oh, no, you did not just. Well, now we're done having this discussion. Now we're in it. But what I think is, can we talk a little bit about what Madison got wrong?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That was the next point that I wanted to bring up. Because on one hand listeners, Federalist 10 is championed and has been championed and advocated for centuries, a couple of centuries is how Madison believed that you should not try to subvert human nature but minimize the effects of human nature. But he did get at least one thing terribly wrong, which was what Nia?
N. Rodgers: To my mind, what he got wrong was not thinking in terms of how wealthy some individuals would get and their outsized influence. I'm betting that you have something. By the way listeners, in case you want to go read Federalist 10 we will put it in the research guide and it's not very long. These are essays and they don't take very long to read. We're talking less than five minutes you can have read it. Now, can you absorb it in five minutes? No, because scholars have been discussing it since 1787 when this one was written anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: I would go a little bit further than that point that you just raised which is, it's not only the outside influence of the wealthy and the elite, it's the fact that the wealthy and elite will frequently create their own factions which then acts as a multiplier effect. If you think about interest groups in the United States, the old adage, somewhat Ruefully said is, the interest group choir in the United States is a wealthy one because most interest groups that have any policy influence in the United States typically have a whole bunch of money. It's not just one or two wealthy people. It's not the George Soros or the Koch brothers.
N. Rodgers: But it's the packs and the other groups that they support and a bunch of them support.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right. That's why for instance when unions became legalized in the United States in the late 1930s.
N. Rodgers: That's why politicians woo them, because they have enormous numbers of people and money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Paying their dues and all of a sudden unions now can compete with interest groups crafted by big business or really wealthy capitalists. Now all of a sudden you have all of this money with all of these interest groups. What do elected officials need when they run for office Nia?
N. Rodgers: Money.
J. Aughenbaugh: They need money.
N. Rodgers: They call that a war chest.
J. Aughenbaugh: They call it a war chest because they're going to war.
N. Rodgers: Boy, is that the wrong idea about politics? But anyway. But it is, it's treated as a war and it's treated as a war in the sense that it's okay to say anything you want about your opponent which is not okay either.
J. Aughenbaugh: Madison got it wrong about interest groups. I don't think he understood how interest groups could form in the United States as the American economy shifted from agrarian to industrialization. The robber barons Nia of the late 1800s, they created a model that you still see interest groups use today which is, if there are people with similar interest to you and they have money, you want them as part of your group.
N. Rodgers: You jointly hold things together or you come out with joint statements about blah, blah, blah thing and it's to multiply the effect of your-
J. Aughenbaugh: Your power and your influence. The other thing in Federalist 10 is always viewed as a response to or concern about political parties. But I really don't think Madison understood how political parties would develop in the United States and end up controlling government positions and those positions have power. Because that was the thing about those positions in the US Constitution. That the anti-federalists frequently railed about. Theoretically, the United States Congress could do a lot to a lot of people. We've discussed this. Or the president being a sole person. The anti-federalists were just like, how is that not a king?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: There's a certain argument there. I'm not saying that they're not completely wrong, especially with the power of the executive order. How is that not a king? How is that not a dispute? When you mentioned this to me about your classes and I think it's a true thing that we should keep in mind. People love executive orders when it's something that they like.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: People hate the power of executive orders when it's either someone or something they don't like.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: It's hilarious to me that when they say, we should get rid of executive orders, except when my guy does it and then we should have them times a thousand. But it doesn't work that way. Just like when we talk about getting rid of the filibuster, it's a dangerous game to play because you will at some point be the minority party, you may not be the minority party now, but you will be at some point because of the way the politics in this country are built.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your Madison's point was, separation of powers, checks, and balances and federalism would mitigate the effects of factions. But near to your point, let's say the country picks a president of one political party and both houses of Congress are controlled by that political party with comfortable margins like a large enough margin in the Senate to overcome the filibuster. At that point those structural counterbalances that Madison references in Federalist 10, they don't work. But they will work. Again, think about, for instance, Roosevelt in 1936. He runs for re-election, absolutely wipes out the Republican party opponent and he increases the Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. He was in effect a king. That's where we get.
N. Rodgers: Which is how we get all the stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Madison in some ways didn't think that that could be possible. Well, it becomes possible when you only have two political parties and one does really well in elections, guess what you get.
N. Rodgers: Well, in Madison's day there were how many parties?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, at least initially there weren't any because remember when the constitutional.
N. Rodgers: You just voted for president and vice like whoever got the second number of votes is vice president. That's right. I forgot about that, but you voted in the guy that got the top number was president of the guy that got the second number was vice president.
J. Aughenbaugh: President.
N. Rodgers: Who the heck knows what their political leanings were.
J. Aughenbaugh: Throughout the first half of the 1800s, you actually had regional parties. It wasn't unusual to actually have four or five people run for president.
N. Rodgers: That's pretty awesome, but I can see where he would not have thought.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That it would distill down to two parties because they were so in some ways they were so factionalized that it was actually.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, that's where his geography argument probably didn't allow him to see media how we would end up with two dominant political parties that would span the entirety of the country.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, one of the things that he mentions in Federalist 10, over and over and over is a well-constructed constitution, he keeps mentioning that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Well-constructed political milia.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I don't know that he saw that it would become unconstructed in the way that it has.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah and the language of a political science.
N. Rodgers: Whereas the anti-federalist might have been a little bit right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, in the language.
N. Rodgers: In their concerns.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of political scientists. Madison was a structuralist. Madison believed that structures and institutions could mitigate against the dangerous, if you will, passions of the people. That has not always worked, that is not always worked. On the other hand, anytime I hear friends, acquaintances, students complain about how slow-moving the American government is, I'm like, hey, according to Federalist 10, that was on purpose, and they're just like, yeah, but we don't get anything done. I hear this a lot, particularly from my younger students who are just like, it's difficult to stay involved and interested in politics because things don't change. I'm like, oh yes they do. They just don't change as quickly as you would like.
N. Rodgers: Around the.
J. Aughenbaugh: Incremental.
N. Rodgers: Whether they call that, it's not geographic but the way glaciers move.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's their timescale.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. We get glacier change instead of change. At times, and you see this for instance, with the protests after the George Floyd murder or even the January 6, 2020 riots at the capital. When you don't get that immediate change, there are folks who will respond. They may not respond well, but nevertheless, if you read Federalist 10, incremental glacier change, it was hardwired into the system because Madison, as you pointed out Nia, and this is all over Federalist 10. A well-constructed, a well-structured, and I'm obsessed. In many ways, Madison in the framers viewed it as they were building a nation, they we're building a nation in like, when you're building a house or an office building, when it's being constructed. I don't know about you Nia, sometimes I'm just like, I don't know what they're attempting here, but this doesn't look like anything.
N. Rodgers: It doesn't look like it's going to stand up. Then it turns out to stand up really well par with while you have to. It's an excellent metaphor because part of what you have to do when you build a skyscraper is it has to be able to move with the wind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But not too much if it moves too much with the wind it falls over on the buildings next to it and they don't like that. But if it doesn't move at all, it will fall over on the buildings next to it, which they don't like as aforementioned, because it doesn't give a little bit. It has to do both things. It has to be strong, but it has to be slightly maneuverable.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Can I read another phrase from the Federalist 10?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities that where no substantial occasion presents itself. The most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Now, I'm just going to put out here, Madison didn't think a whole lot of the people in some ways.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: He was basically like humans are just animals with less hair. We're going to do these things and that's actually a good thing. You can depend on that. To be the thing that like yes, a faction may form. But then somebody is going to say something about somebody's mama and it's all going to be over. There is a perceived insult or there's a perceived rift and then it drives that faction apart. What Madison was saying was, that's good. We can depend on humans to be fickle. We can depend on humans to be not able to hold together a faction for any super length of time. Boy, did he get that right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Your friends today but you may not. Congress strikes me. I don't know if you remember this from high school, but you had to be careful about who you assumed was dating whom because that could have changed an hour ago in math class. You might be stepping on feelings and hurting people if you say anything, so you just had to be real careful about that thing. That's a lot how factions in Congress work. They'll form. But how long they last is hugely dependent on, do they have a common enemy? Does the common enemy hold? Can they hold? It's a faction.
J. Aughenbaugh: What bill was being proposed, what bill was being discussed, and what bill was on the floor?
N. Rodgers: How much do they need that thing versus this thing? How much do they dislike the person who brought it up?
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, listeners, what Nia is pointing to is, on that point, Madison's responding to one of the overarching critiques of the Anti-Federalists of the then proposed constitution, which was. The government would have so much power that this would be harmful to the people. But Madison's view was and this was shared by many at the Constitutional Convention, was that in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, the people of the various states had basically went ahead and demonstrated that they could turn on one another just like that. If we know that that's going to happen, instead of hoping that it's not going to happen, they were very pragmatic. Madison in particular was very pragmatic about human nature.
N. Rodgers: Let's just build a system where that takes that into account.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's hard-wired into it.
J. Aughenbaugh: What we criticize today for as deal breaking and compromising. Well, Madison was this like, we want to encourage that because it's not going to be permanent. It's not going to be permanent.
N. Rodgers: The deal with his maid this week won't hold three years from now.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. Think about for instance, if you are the Democrats in the United States Senate and prior to last year's midterms, you basically we're at the whim of two senators, Joe Mansion and Kiersten Sinema. As well chronicled in the press and as we've joked on this podcast, good luck figuring out where those two would fall on any particular bill proposal policy, etc. Because where Joe Mansion was in April might be completely different at the end of August. Because Kiersten Sinema has been noteworthy for not disclosing where she falls on proposed legislation in some cases until they actually take a vote on it in the Senate. That proves, if you will, Madison's point, which is, our elected officials are going to often act like their constituents, which is today Nia, you and I can go ahead and agree on where to get lunch. Tomorrow I might go ahead and say.
N. Rodgers: I don't want to eat lunch with you. Next week when you need me to sign off on something you'd like, hey, not at lunch.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hey, I got this project and could you work with me? Again, Madison's assumption was, well, if it serves your purposes, Nia, you will say yes and if it doesn't, you'll go ahead and say, I'll get back to you.
N. Rodgers: The Anti-Federalists argument was, I think, and make sure I'm clear on this, that factions would form and they would stay formed because the conditions that formed them wouldn't change quickly enough and they could tyrannize the minority.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Probably in some instances they were right too. Madison had a pretty decent read on people if they don't get along now, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that lasting. But occasionally it does last. Occasionally, even disparate people who don't agree on anything else will agree on, say the FarmVille subsidy. That brings farm Democrats together with farm Republicans. Say we need this thing and the overarching thing that draws them together is farming, not the bill.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, or think about for instance, the various southern states imposing Jim Crow after the reconstruction. For those of us from the North, who were born in the South, you can go ahead and say, well, all southern states are the same, but they're not. They're not, and you can't go ahead and say that. But the extent to which there was a coalition of whites who were the Civil War, it didn't turn out the way we wanted. The rest of the country thinks we're racist because we believe in slavery and we don't like African Americans.
N. Rodgers: Or more likely we fear them as a voting block, as a group, we fear them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Politically, economically, socially, etc.
N. Rodgers: We fear we will lose our place to them.
J. Aughenbaugh: To a certain extent, the Anti-Federalists captured that particular contexts extremely well, whereas Madison would have argued at no point could the Southern states for nearly a century after the Civil War be able to maintain that. Madison didn't think that would be possible.
N. Rodgers: Boy, was he wrong?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, he was wrong, terribly wrong.
N. Rodgers: What we're getting at here with the Federalist Papers is even though the Federalists won.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They weren't always right and they couldn't always see the way this was going because guess what? Madison was not Nostradamus. Madison did not have a crystal ball. I don't know that he conceived that the South would secede from the union, didn't have to be dragged back kicking and screaming. That the Jim Crow laws of the South, the North mainly let go so that they didn't have to have another civil war. I'm not sure that he saw any of that. Now, by the same token, the Anti-Federalists, basically almost all their arguments so far as I can tell, and I've only read a couple so I could be wrong and I'm going to keep reading as we work on these. Is generally no kings but if you could do the breakdown into two words it would be no kings. Whatever system we set up they would rapidly anti-monarchy and they would see the modern obsession in the United States with the British monarchy as nuts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is a poling.
N. Rodgers: We just lost blood and treasure to get rid of these fools and you want to keep them in the news like currently the Prince Harry's book Spare.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's like on the top of the best seller list and they would be pulling their hair out and saying, "Are you insane? Why do you care about these people?"
J. Aughenbaugh: Because so many of the Anti-Federalist Papers basically just start off with this new kings. This new constitution basically makes the federal government just like the British Crown.
N. Rodgers: No kings: enter more argument here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I mean, it is a constant theme.
N. Rodgers: The reason they were having that argument is because there were still people. First of all, anybody who thinks that everybody in the revolution thought on the American side.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Is wrong, we had a lot of people in the United States who fought on the British side. Because they liked the monarchy and because they didn't know what would come after. There had only been monarchy as far as they had ever known and they didn't want to experiment. They didn't want to find out this bold new whatever Madisonian plan thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: For listeners, just do a thought experiment, think about how many times in your life you've not wanted to go ahead and do something new because you fear change.
N. Rodgers: Even though the thing you're doing is grinding, painful and terrible, it's a known thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, is a common phrase.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Those people were known as Laurelists. They may not have liked everything about the British crown. But they knew the British Crown.
N. Rodgers: The system make it work within.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because they have figured out, the previous generation of their family or previous two generations had lived under the British Crown and they may not have been thriving. But they knew that, what they didn't know would be the result and they did know in the early years of the Revolutionary War was things weren't going well because wars require sacrifice.
N. Rodgers: We were losing it first.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They're like, "Oh, this isn't going well, and when we lose this, we are going to be punished unbelievably." The people who thought, we either have to win it or we all have to die because we've committed now. That's the Hamiltonian point of view of or give me liberty or give me death, which is Thomas Paine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: No, Patrick Henry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Patrick Henry.
N. Rodgers: This idea of I don't have a choice now, I'm in it, and if we can't win, we have to die because when George gets to punishing us, it is going to be awful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because this idea of losing a war with dignity, yeah, that didn't exist.
N. Rodgers: Well, and if they had not won, we would have been occupied and we would be a Commonwealth nation now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: So probably a little earlier than Canada getting our freedom, but still.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because at some point, one of the difficulties that colonial powers have always had historically is when they've tried to keep colonies nations with a lot of people in a lot of territory, it just becomes really difficult.
N. Rodgers: Just as a side note, when you think about tiny little Britain owning three-quarters of the world at one point, you're like, wow, that's some pretty intense imperialism there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right. But I'm glad you captured that because it's easy to go ahead and say the Anti-Federalists were one-trick ponies with their argument, but understand why they were so concerned about a strong national government. There are still elements of that debate even today.
N. Rodgers: Oh, yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Every time I see a state go to federal court to go ahead and challenge something that the federal government is doing, I'm reminded of the Anti-Federalists being concerned that too much power was given to the federal government in the then proposed constitution, because that was central to the Anti-Federalist argument. The best government is the government closest to the people.
N. Rodgers: The one most accountable.
J. Aughenbaugh: To the people.
N. Rodgers: Because if you make a decision as the governor in a state area, the response to that as Governor Yangon is going to be immediate. When he put in that phone line for education, Carlos, if you think that something is happening at your school or whatever, the response to that was immediate. He got an immediate response to his action, which caused them to slowly, 10 months later, and quietly kill that thing and it doesn't exist anymore. Now you can't do that. The Anti-Federalists were saying that's what will get you the best governance is when the people can say no, and have it actually be something that counts. Right now, I regularly say no to the president and they don't hear me, whereas I think if I went to city council meeting and I said no, no, they would actually have to deal with me even if nothing else to have me thrown out of the meeting, but still.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Nia, what you and I have discussed about every time the Supreme Court in June hands down all their big rulings, and you've laughed because you know that I will start yelling and screaming at my computer. The Supreme Court's not responsive.
N. Rodgers: Darn them all to heck.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, the local government where I live, you have a bunch of my neighbors doing something I don't like and I'm making no phone calls. At some point in time, there's going to be a county vehicle in my neighborhood checking out the situation, and that's responsiveness. That's the point that the Anti-Federalists were making. It's really easy if you're in New Mexico to go ahead and think that those yahoos in Washington DC are not going to be responsive to what's going on in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
N. Rodgers: And you're right.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're right. But Madison would say, that's a good thing. He would say that in Federalist 10 because the country is so big.
N. Rodgers: The yahoos in Washington can't tell you what to do in Albuquerque in Mexico. They got too much stuff going on.
J. Aughenbaugh: So which do you prefer, right?
N. Rodgers: Everybody had a decent argument here, but we would say that for the most part, Madison won this one, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Just to remind people, we do think he lost out on a couple of things. We think he didn't see the money that was coming into politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of interest, group politics. Oh, good Lord, did he get that wrong?
N. Rodgers: He didn't see that we would drop down to two or one-and-a-half parties depending on how one thinks of it, because you have the extremes, which is one party and the moderates, which is a half party in the middle.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because right now one of the criticisms of both political parties in the United States is.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, I don't think we have Democrats and Republicans anymore. I think we have nut jobs and moderants. I think those are our two political parties, but even that, I don't think Madison saw it coming.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: But anyway, excellent. Thank you, Aughie for talking to me about Federalist 10, I guess. Next time we'll talk about another Federalist Paper.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I think the next time we're going to look at Federalist 39.
N. Rodgers: Oh, cool. All right. So look forward to that, folks, when we get around to it, which who knows when that will be, but we will do our best.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because right now me and Nia's attention spans are like a dog in the backyard that is populated with squirrels, chipmunks, and cats.
N. Rodgers: It's true; we're all over the map. We're trying not to be, but it's just how it is right now, folks. So thank you for sticking with us and thank you, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.
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