Other than the Bill of Rights, which addressed some of the objections raised I wonder if there was an anti-Anti-Federalist Papers which in turn addressed those concerned more in depth.
You're looking for the Federalist Papers [0]. The first Federalist Papers were written as a response to the first Anti-Federalist Papers, and the two groups carried on the debate for months by continuing to write more counter-essays.
You don’t have to argue for something if no one is objecting. There was fear that the Constitutional Convention, originally called to amend the Articles of Confederation, maybe, and deal with some of the practical problems facing the Union, had gone too far in proposing an entirely new Constitution.
Most of the papers themselves are structured as a series of "hypothetical" objections, each followed by a retort. The reason why I put that in quotes is that many of them weren't hypothetical to the intended audience.
Sometimes it gets really funny, like in #54 (about the 3/5 Compromise), where the author clearly doesn't like the idea on its own all that much, and would prefer to not be seen as an ardent supporter of it - and thus, the retort itself is also written from a third person perspective: "... might one of our Southern brethren observe ... " etc.
also worth a read is "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States" by Charles Beard which examines how the personal financial interests of the founding fathers shaped the constitution
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll add this to my list.
I'm trying to justify purchasing The Complete Anti-Federalist by Herbert J. Storing on Google bookstore which costs $340. Seems pretty steep, however it looks like its the most authoritative source on the anti-federalist papers.
Charles A Beard also did one on US history as well which was eye opening for myself. It's incredibly interesting how he dismantles a lot of our facade of a history into simple bourgeoisie economics. He makes everything modern conservative pundits preach in regards to the founding fathers as just pure lies. I mean look how fast the Anti-Federalists were stamped out! The revolution was purely a fabrication of rights stripped from the industrialist estates. The average worker wasn't as affected as much. But they were easily riled that's for sure. Everything in the early days of the US was just radical libertarians and aristocrats just seeking their own self interest. Since the majority of the US was still an agricultural economy based off of preceding thought surrounding Physiocracy, the system at the time was implemented far differently than it is today. Now it is on a full-scale industrialized level, but with a system devised for farmers, artisans, and aristocrats.
The US system though will never change as long as it's the global hegemon. Much like the British Empire, Roman Empire, Qi Dynasty, and Holy Roman Empire; these major players never ended up reforming until their total collapse. As much as anybody hates to see it, that is the only way for this system to be revised. There is a big pie for many to take a piece of in the US. It's why there are minimal united for change.
Beard's book is simply a proto-communist critique of the US government (in the form of the Realty vs the Personalty). Most of this book simply attempt to assert malice where other explanations are plentiful.
For example, he asserts that the 3 branches were intended to make the country less of a democracy.
Yes, the goal was a republic instead of a democracy because (as spelled out in the Federalist papers) pure democracies always wind up persecuting minorities (2 wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for dinner) and all historical democracies up to that point fell apart rather quickly. Limiting the power of any one person or cabal was of prime importance.
Beard rejects all these reasons as essentially true, but made up excuses (though history is not on his side). Instead, he claims it was to protect them from being overthrown by the masses.
He asserts that the constitution was an economic document. Of course this is true. It was trying to convince 13 countries to become one, unified country. It tried to guarantee it wouldn't interfere with things in the Bill of Rights. Once the constitution has established that it can't butt into people's moral business, all that is left is economics. They set down rules to keep one state from oppressing another, rules for foreign commerce, and left internal issues to the states. Beard doesn't say how the rules could be better, he just asserts that because most of the writers had money, they must have had nefarious reasons for establishing those rules.
Here's another example. The constitution says the US should pay it's debts. Beard asserts this is because Washington loaned money and wanted it back. Sure, this could be true, but it is also true that small, new countries guaranteeing to pay back money to lenders is paramount to securing loans in the first place.
Realty were his creation that was anyone without large amounts of liquid assets (this included land owners). Personalty were people with liquid assets and manufacturing power. He claims the realty were entirely suppressed by the personalty during the constitution's creation. He doesn't provide much hard evidence aside from very generic things like he thinks it was hard to collect farmer's votes or opinion pieces in various newspapers that were anti-federalist.
The federalists asserted that if the states didn't unite, they would slowly devolve into a bunch of little, squabbling countries that would be played against each other or outright conquered by the European powers. He has no answer.
He claimed repression of the realty, but many of the county's most famous people rose from nothing. In fact, the upward mobility of the US has exceeded every other country since it's inception. This contradicts his claim, yet he has no answer.
I would go so far as to say that he fails to justify any of his smears and that history both before and after 1913 has not been on his side.
I had not read these before, but they are fascinating. For instance, this powerful argument[0] against the Electoral College is still made, nearly verbatim, today.
Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. Right now is clearly a nadir, it's looking like Trump is going to lose the general electorate by 5 points but the tipping point state by only 0.6, which is just outrageous. But as recently as 2012 we had a (much smaller) skew in the opposite direction, and people tend to forget that.
Or, consider a future where some combination of Texas/Georgia/Arizona do what Colorado and Virginia did over the last decade, complete their urbanization and turn hard blue. In that world, we'd be looking at a very large democratic advantage in the EC.
Yeah, it's gotta be fixed. It just doesn't correspond well to the kind of population dynamics we have in the modern US. Nothing in the original constitution expected a country where both Wyoming and California could be a single "state". Call your reps and ask for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
> Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out.
The argument today says nothing about Democrats or Republicans, it just says the president should be whoever gets the most votes nationwide. So I don’t see how it “swings” both ways.
Which is a pity, because if you read the thinking behind it in the Federalist Papers, it is neither Machiavellian or sinister, but rather an attempt to try to get reasonable people to act as a safeguard over the highest office in the nation.
Alternatively: the EC compromise reflected the personal self-interest of Hamilton/Madison/Jay, just like your citation of them reflects your personal partisan lean. As mentioned, I really doubt you'd have been making a principled argument to that effect in 2012 when the skew went the other way.
It's just silly. And it can produce antidemocratic outcomes on occasion, as it did in 2016.
I was around in 2012 actually. I also did not understand fully the intricacies of the system as formulated by the Founders. Nor did I appreciate the usurpation of the executive function of an elector in measuring the character of a candidate by the various States and the two National political parties. Fortunately, I was unsatisfied with that state of affairs, and read into the history and writings of the time, so that I could have a better chance of understanding what it was the Founders saw and hoped would carry to the modern day.
The understanding I got out of it, was that over the last 200 years is that we've struck a balance between opening up sufferage, but rewriting fundamental abstractions such that the pre-eminence of only two political collectives can be be ontologically considered, ensuring that yet another check the Founders were counting on, Regional Factionalism would disappear as a mitigating factor to prevent the development of a "National Political Elite", much to the dismay of Hamilton and Madison.
So, yeah thanks for assuming a modern political caricature is enough to represent the full nuance of my position on a highly argued, oft misunderstood, and underappreciated topic on the mechanics, merits, and warts of the American political system. Really appreciate it.
If you read the convention notes, those make it very clear that it really was an attempt to compromise on the issue of representation for the slave and the small states by, effectively, transparently incorporating the already-established Connecticut Compromise and 3/5 Compromise. And slave states were really the main roadblock to any scheme involving direct popular vote, because then their slave population would effectively not count for the purposes of representation in the executive.
All the stuff about electors being a safeguard etc was post hoc rationalization. I'm not even saying it was in bad faith - the people arguing that EC was a safeguard were doing it sincerely. But that's not why the idea got so much support.
It's not quite that simple, because the American political parties are coalitions. For the middle of the 20th century the Democratic Party was an odd coalition that joined organized labor and northern populists with Dixiecrats (conservative southern Democrats opposed to civil rights), while the Republicans represented both northern big business (the Rockefeller faction) and more libertarian/doctrinaire conservative Westerners (the Goldwater faction). The antidemocratic people, the ones that manipulated the rules to keep a minority in power, were the Dixiecrats. They created all kinds of obstacles to prevent Black people from voting.
The parties reshuffled after the Democrats adopted civil rights and the rise of Reagan shifted the balance in the Republican Party. The Dixiecrats (and non-southerners who think like them) largely became Republicans, and the Rockefeller Republicans largely became Democrats. The factions that believed in minority rule still believe it, but they are under different party flags now.
It's not the same argument that's being made today. They arguing against delegation of your vote to another person. Quoting:
> Is it then become necessary, that a free people should first resign their right of suffrage into other hands besides their own, and then, secondly, that they to whom they resign it should be compelled to choose men, whose persons, characters, manners, or principles they know nothing of?
We no longer have a system where you vote for an elector who decides which presidential candidate to vote for. The electors in the electoral college execute a formality, they don't make decisions. The issues around electoral college vs. popular vote are not addressed in this paper.
The system has been patched since, yes. I was stunned reading this criticism of the powers given to the office of President:
> By the same means, he may render his suspensive power over the laws as operative and permanent as that of G. the 3d [George III] over the acts of the British parliament; and under the modest title of president, may exercise the combined authority of legislation and execution, in a latitude yet unthought of. Upon his being invested with those powers a second or third time, he may acquire such enormous influence -- as, added to his uncontrollable power over the army, navy, and militia; together with his private interest in the officers of all these different departments, who are all to be appointed by himself, and so his creatures, in the true political sense of the word; and more especially when added to all this, he has the power of forming treaties and alliances, and calling them to his assistance -- that he may, I say, under all these advantages and almost irresistible temptations, on some pretended pique, haughtily and contemptuously, turn our poor lower house (the only shadow of liberty we shall have left) out of doors, and give us law at the bayonet's point. Or, may not the senate, who are nearly in the same situation, with respect to the people, from similar motives and by similar means, erect themselves easily into an oligarchy, towards which they have already attempted so large a stride? To one of which channels, or rather to a confluence of both, we seem to be fast gliding away; and the moment we arrive at it -- farewell liberty. . . .
The Senate confirmation process has worked both for and against Presidents. This was a powerful argument during the ratification debates and the Anti-Federalists were an important faction (if you could call them a faction anyway, it’s more than just the people that wrote these papers), but history has proven the President isn’t a King. Even the public discourse criticizing the excesses of Bush II, Obama and Trump have been important to curtailing those abuses, and unlike Kings, Presidents have term limits: 4 years, and then America decides if it still wants your leadership, like clockwork.
Thanks to people like the Anti-Federalists, both the writers behind the papers and the larger segment of society that was against the Constitution, a Bill of Rights was promised during the ratification debates, and then drafted and passed by the Congress and then ratified by sufficient States. The system works, better than we sometimes like to give it credit for.
> a Bill of Rights was promised during the ratification debates, and then drafted and ratified by the Congress
Well, Articles 2-12 of the proposed Bill of Rights were ratified by the States (Congress proposes amendments but does not ratify them), though Article 2 only after quite an extended period had elapsed from it's proposal.
>We no longer have a system where you vote for an elector who decides which presidential candidate to vote for. The electors in the electoral college execute a formality, they don't make decisions.
Not necessarily so. The States can punish or replace faithless Electors, but a punishment doesn’t necessarily replace a faithless vote with a faithful one.
In theory, Trump received 306 EC votes in 2016 to Clinton’s 232[1]. In reality it was 304 for Trump, 227 for Clinton, 3 for Colin Powell, 1 for Bernie Sanders, 1 for John Kasich, 1 for Ron Paul, 1 for Faith Spotted Eagle[2]. There were 3 others that voted faithlessly but those votes were invalidated by their State’s, one of them changed his vote back to who he pledged for, and the others were replaced with alternates. Some faithless votes on the Vice Presidential vote as well, but refer back to [2] for those.
>> Is it then become necessary, that a free people should first resign their right of suffrage into other hands besides their own, and then, secondly, that they to whom they resign it should be compelled to choose men, whose persons, characters, manners, or principles they know nothing of?
What I find lacking about that argument is the principle also applies to Congress, just change "choose men" to "pass laws".
The apportioning of Electoral Votes is identical to that of Congressional seats.
The method of filling Electoral seats (decided by state legislature) is identical to how Senatorial seats were filled prior to passage of the 17th Amendment.
With all that, I think it's fair to think of the electoral College as a single-use, single-purpose Congress. I wonder if starting with that as a prior would improve discussions about changing the EC.
The Federalist Papers actually have a very powerful argument (#22) against the thing that's most problematic with EC:
"Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America3; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."
"But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy."
Hamilton wrote it about the one-state-one-vote arrangement under...
> The Anti-Federalists proved unable to stop the ratification of the US Constitution, which took effect in 1789. Since then, the essays they wrote have largely fallen into obscurity. Unlike, for example, The Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison, none of their works are mainstays in college curricula or court rulings. The influence of their writing, however, can be seen to this day – particularly in the nature and shape of the United States Bill of Rights.
Check out National Review’s Constitutionally Speaking podcast. Ostensibly still being published, it’s already finished a thorough walkthrough of the why and how of the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Ratification debates. If I recall correctly, the main body of the podcast is finished before episode 50.
I’m surprised by how many people in this thread (and I assume a good portion are American) are unfamiliar with the existence of these. I knew our social studies education sucked in the US but I didn’t know it was that bad. The arguments of the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers (and therefore their existence) is supposed to be taught in a middle school level history class in a unit on the formation of the republic after the revolution. At least it was in mine and I can’t understand why it wouldn’t be in others since it’s at the core of the debate around the passage of the constitution and then shortly thereafter passage of the Bill of Rights. The two sets of papers also reflect on issues people had with The Articles of Confederation.
I recall discussing in school the Federalist Papers, and in general that the authors of those papers had opponents. I believe in particular some essays by Brutus arguing for a bill of rights were emphasized. What wasn't really mentioned in my school, at least, is a specific body of work called "The Anti-Federalist Papers". That might be because the collection and name is of fairly recent origin, dating only to the 1960s. The essays themselves are of course much older, but collecting them into a numbered series of essays mirroring the way the Federalist Papers are numbered is more recent.
On the same topic, it wasn't till searching on my own I found out about the arguments against the bill of rights. Namely, and I find this quite compelling but still don't know where I stand on it, that by formulating a list of rights that were protected, the government would then default to assuming those not listed weren't protected, which is anathema to the foundational idea of unalienable rights in the first place. In general I think one of the things I learned from this and other similar why didn't the education system teach this is that there is a marked lack of analysis of opposing viewpoints in times of history in the current education system.
I just read the Federalist Papers from front to back, it was absolutely beautiful.
My short review of the book would read;
"It is not just an excellent display of political knowledge, nor just an astute vision of governance, but mostly an acknowledgement and exposé on human nature. "
I am from Australia and wish we taught it in schools also.
I didn't know there were Anti-Federalist Papers so time to buy some more wine and get going.
Note: Ben Shapiro does a nice video on what the Federalist Papers are about.
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It was one of the harder reads I've done such that it almost feels like a life accomplishment.
I'd personally recommend just googling the top 5-10, choosing some that you like and just listening to the audio book versions e.g. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PiSeeJQkrQ
I always prefer reading myself but in this case my comprehension was slightly better just listening to some of the essays.
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“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.”
- Hamilton
Just so you know, Ben Shapiro is a man who also says things like "Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage".
While I actively seek pundits/academics/scholars I disagree with to avoid existing in a thought-bubble I also try to avoid those whom have espoused racist views in the past. You lose legitimacy in my eyes once you demonstrate that you are a racist.
This seems to be a frequent excuse these days, and rarely comes with an explanation of what the context was. I'm not sure what kind of context you can add to that statement that makes it mean something else.
Ben speaks like each word is a Magic the Gathering card - that's what he's good at. So, when the opponent plays "bring up embarrassing quote," he plays "claim it was out of context."
The Federalist Papers are widely known and covered in school.
But there is no "supposed to be taught" -- anyone who knows American history knows that, for federal reasons, educational curricula are set at state or even local levels. Your school district appears to be highly unusual... and I'm pretty amazed at the concept of teaching this in middle school. May I ask where you went, out of both curiosity and envy? ;)
The relevant Wikipedia article even states:
> ...the essays they wrote have largely fallen into obscurity. Unlike, for example, The Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison, none of their works are mainstays in college curricula or court rulings. [1]
I don’t think the parent meant that they engaged with the texts themselves at the middle school level, but rather that the existence of both sides of the debate was covered as an historical fact.
Yeah the only thing I recall is that 8th Grade is commonly taught the US Constitution. In some states passing a constitution test is required for graduation. But again it is done at the state level, and I have never seen anything requiring the Anti-Federalist papers be covered.
What school did you go to? Was it private? We only covered this at my public school (in Ohio) in AP US History class, meaning that the vast majority of students were never exposed to either set or arguments
In my (public school) experience, the Anti-Federalist Papers were taught only as an excerpted footnote while giving more airtime to the contents of the Federalist Papers. Another one of those "winners write history" effects - the losing argument is only remembered as a foil to the winning arguments.
They both felt like footnotes to me. In fact I feel like my entire education was just "yeah this exited and this is a breif summary of what it was". The only history course I remember having much substance was the madatory "state history" course we had to take in 7th grade. Of course, I may have just not been paying attention.
I was in middle school in the 80’s and found history to be excruciatingly boring. I don’t think any of it stuck because I just didn’t care, it was just a bunch of adults adulting and I had no understanding.
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I had any appreciation for the human side of it all and how it was so much more than things that happened before I was born.
So, to be fair, it’s entirely possible this was part of our education and I just reserved zero synapses to its retention.
I recently tried reading some of the Federalist Papers, but found the writing style too opaque for a casual read (perhaps some of the other authors' are more accessible, but then, Hamilton did write most of them). Can anyone recommend some kind of annotated version that's more accessible to a modern reader?
These Anti-Federalist Papers seem a bit more accessible, but part of my interest is in understanding the motivation of the writing of the constitution, and it seems there is no better source for that than the Federalist Papers.
The best source is the Constitution, and second to that are Supreme Court rulings. Madison came to the convention with the meat of what would become the Constitution, but the actual language was shaped and clarified by committee. Most of the Federalist papers are the product of Madison and Hamilton, and those are raw, but they are arguments in defense. Given how many were written by Hamilton who had less participation and less effect, I would argue they’re useful arguments for the why of the Constitution, but not the best means of interpreting it.
I don’t have any annotated versions of the Federalist Papers I can recommend, but The Heritage Foundation has one of the better web annotations of the Constitution[1]. Scroll through and you’ll find various clauses accompanied with full essays in the little “i” icons.
What you may also find helpful is context for the why and the how of the Constitution, as in why did the Articles of Confederation need to be replaced and how did the Constitutional Convention decide to replace them and how they went about replacing them. National Review hosts Constitutionally Speaking[2], and the hosts of the show keep trying to bring it back in various ways but they finished with what they initially promised by the end of Episode 41.
I have a copy of "the federalist papers in modern english - indexed for modern political issues" that I used as a companion reference when I first bought the Federalist Papers. It was good for looking up which essays were relevant to my interests, but personally I felt that my comprehension suffered from being a step removed from the primary source when I used the "Modern Language" version. I think there's a lot to be said for having access to the subtlety and tone from the author, even if it takes some time to adjust to the language.
The upside is that if you get used to reading texts from this era, other writers of the time period become more accessible as well. For example, I recently read many of the sermons of Jon Wesley and found them to be an easier read than I was expecting, perhaps due to my exposure to the federalist papers and others.
I keep both the federalist papers, and the antifederalist papers on my bookshelf. I bought them when Trump was elected because I wanted to see whether the founders thought that there was something in the system that would protect us if a morally bankrupt person took hold the executive branch. Unfortunately, many of the federalists thought we could obviously prevent that from happening, while many of the antifederalists thought that tyrants would become the norm immediately.
They're a fun to flip through, as some of the predictions almost read like alternate history fictions, because they're just so wild.
One essay I found particularly amusing (wish I could remember which paper said it), argued that the complexity of the legislative branch was clearly intended to to create endless demand for lawyers, thus ensuring that the lawyer career path would be prestigious and well-paid forever.
Well, there is endless demand for lawyers, largely because the law and precedences are endlessly complex. But afaik, it is not such a great well paid career now.
As a non-American it always surprises me how much American's look for the past for guidance in the democracy and government. America was one of the first modern democracies, and people who wrote the constitution were the bleeding edge. All that was a long time ago and things have evolved.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jan. 30, 2012:
>You should certainly be aided by all the constitution writing that has gone on since the end of World War II. I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa — that was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recently than the U.S. Constitution, Canada has the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. So, yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world?
We don't have to be smarter to learn from historical stuff that happened. My IQ doesn't go up any when I burn myself on a hot stove, but I certainly learn something.
The way these things are taught in history class is pretty weird, and goes a long way toward explaining this. The Connecticut Compromise is a great example. You're taught that the large states wanted representation in proportion to population, and the small states wanted states to be represented identically (regardless of population), for obvious reasons. So, they decided to split the difference, making one house proportional and the other population-independent. While they did this because it was the only thing they could get agreement on, it was also the greatest civic invention since democracy itself... by coincidence, I guess?
> it was also the greatest civic invention since democracy itself...
I wasn't taught that in history class. I was just taught the facts you described: that the compromise was made because it was the only way to get agreement at the convention on how the national legislature should be organized.
Well, my memory is decades out of date and from a low-population state. Still, I remember spending a lot of time on how smart this was and how well it's worked. "Greatest civic invention since democracy itself" was a bit of hyperbole, but there was definitely a lot of emphasis on how good the compromise was.
I am fairly ignorant about US political system. Doesn't the idea of having two separate houses come from British Westminster system?
The Westminster system is supposedly the basis for my country (Australia's) parliament but I believe we also have taken influences from other systems and have incorporated some things that aren't common anywhere else (like compulsory voting) our constitution comes from 1901.
I could be wrong, but I think the main difference Between US system and ours is how the leader is appointed. The US directly votes for president, where as here the winning party (Based on number of Lower House seats won) appoints the leader. Our Prime Minister is much more beholden to the party he belongs to where in US presidents gets to Veto stuff - I think.
It's my understanding that in that type of system, one of the two houses passes laws while the other represents the general population.
In the US, laws are initiated in the House. If they pass the vote, they go to the Senate which must also vote to pass them. Finally, the President signs them into action or vetoes (which can be overridden by a 2/3 majority).
The Shay's Rebellion had a huge influence on the government design. The majority (all the farmers) agreed that they could vote to force the minority (the banks) to forgive their debts. Several of the earlier Federalist papers go over the many, many democracies that failed (usually for this very reason).
Voters actually elect people as state electors. Those electors come together to cast the actual vote for the president (with backups in case of election issues as this election is likely to require). The minimum number of electors gives slightly disproportionate power to less-populated states. Quite literally, the Constitution gives louder voices to minority areas.
We see this same idea in the Senate. States are equal members of the union no matter if they are large or small and the Senate gives them this power. Even the largest states (population-wise) can't just force through legislation to their exclusive benefit.
> As a non-American it always surprises me how much American's look for the past for guidance in the democracy and government.
We're not looking to the past for guidance. We're looking at what the Constitution says because it is still the supreme law of the land. People who think some provision of that supreme law of the land should be changed can propose amendments; the US Constitution has already been amended 27 times. But you're not supposed to just pretend that the law doesn't apply because you don't like what it says.
> All that was a long time ago and things have evolved.
And the US Constitution has been amended where necessary to take that into account. We amended the Constitution to abolish slavery, to give women the right to vote, to have Senators elected by the people of their states instead of the legislatures, to eliminate poll taxes, to limit how many terms a President can serve. And we can continue to amend the Constitution where necessary to fix other issues. That is how people who want to take Justice Ginsburg's advice and take advantage of advances other countries have made should do that.
I don't think the Founders necessarily expected it to become so difficult to amend things. The most recent Amendment took 202 years to ratify, and that was nearly 30 years ago, and it was a minor tinkering with how Congressional salaries work. You have to go back another 20 years to the next one.
> I don't think the Founders necessarily expected it to become so difficult to amend things.
It isn't difficult if you have general agreement that a particular amendment is needed. What makes it seem difficult to get passage of particular amendments that particular special interest groups have proposed is that there is not general agreement that they are needed. And in that situation, the amendment should not be passed--and that's exactly how the Founders set things up. That's why they required a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress to send an amendment to the States for ratification, and three-fourths of the States to ratify it in order to have it in force.
> The most recent Amendment took 202 years to ratify
That was an anomaly; no other amendment has taken anything close to that long. And that particular one probably could have been passed sooner, except that once it got left out of the original Bill of Rights, it was forgotten.
> The most recent Amendment took 202 years to ratify, and that was nearly 30 years ago
This is a deceptive picture to paint. That amendment was an outlier in respect. There are only 3/27 amendments that took more than 3 years to pass and 2 of them were passed faster than 4 years. The mean is 8.94 years and if you remove the 27th the average was 1.44 years. We also have an average of 8.2 years between the amendments (counting from 1789).
> We also have an average of 8.2 years between the amendments (counting from 1789).
This reinforces my point. The last meaningful amendment (the 27th affecting only a couple hundred people, after all) was in 1971, and I suspect quite a few of the amendments in the 60s/70s would have a tremendously uphill battle if on the table in today's political climate.
Your point might be that we're currently in an outlying situation, but that's not quite what you said and you used a deceptive data point to make that point. One could attribute our current outlying behavior to the strange debate of "living vs static document" that is being had (weird because we literally have the federalist papers and notes on what the founders wanted so it doesn't make sense to argue "what the founders thought" without looking at said documents).
The point here is that your comment implies that that amendments are few and far between and you used an outlier to make that point. That statement was woefully misleading. Which frankly isn't going to fly on HN.
Yeah there is no chance that the voting age could be changed today. Young people vote left. The GOP would never permit an expansion of the voting population that leaned against them.
I believe they did. There is no unity in force. There is unity in cooperation and mutual agreement.
When 51% want something, it shouldn’t be so. It should necessarily require more buy in.
That’s precisely why the states were largely expected to govern themselves with federal power being less extreme. The divide that we see in the country today is caused by two sides trying to force their way on each other rather than allowing states to just...disagree.
We’d all be a lot better off if our states ran the way we wanted and simply turned our nose up and joked about the ones we didn’t agree with, than trying to constantly force those other states to do things our way.
the shared burden of infrastructure makes that problematic. A huge chunk of the country would collapse if it didn't have the ability to externalize cost to other states, and taxing the coasts without representing their needs in the budget would kind of, like, be counter to the point, no?
Well said! I agree 100%. When we look back to the Founders this is what we're talking about. A multi-layered Federal Republic without strong centralization. Centralization is what Progressives have been pushing on us bit by bit for 100 years and look at the mess we're in now. Every regime change in the Whitehouse pisses off 50% of the country. We're a large country with 50 independent states of differing geographies and political philosophies that s/b largely governing themselves. We're not a small country like Sweden. Why can't we have progressive states like CA and conservative states like TX. If CA wants healthcare they can implement it themselves and if TX doesn't then they don't have to do it for themselves. CA is the 5th largest economy in the world on their own. They dont need DC. I'm a conservative who crossed the border from MA into the Live Free or Die state of NH. Why do Progressives want to hammer a one size fits all solution down to all states from DC and ruin our freedoms like that?
Every single time I end up I a discussion about the electoral college it returns to “the founders knew what they were doing.” There is absolutely a reverence for the popular perception of the founders and the idea that it were possible for them to be completely wrong is just not viable in the discourse today.
The judiciary's role is to interpret and apply the law, not to legislate or rewrite it. We aren't looking to the past, but to the law, and the context surrounding it's writing so as to understand it. Of course laws are written in the past, but that's incidental. Many countries have lots of interesting ideas; that's up to the legislative branch to be informed by, and perhaps copy. For the judicial branch to do otherwise would invalidate a rule of law, and the separation of powers. While interpretation of law evolves, it can't be rewritten because a judge (or judges) liked something another country did.
If the legislative branch wishes to amend The Constitution, there is a procedure for that, including a wholesale rewriting of it (Constitutional Convention). We've amended it via 27 amendments, substantially altering its structure.
There's a practical lesson here: in contentious areas like politics, having a standard everyone agrees on—even if they don't agree on interpretation—is valuable in and of itself. The Constitution and its surrounding documents are foundational simply because they're foundational, not because they are the final word on political philosophy or practical governance. The Constitution just has to be good enough to supply a floor for the quality of a government that has any pretense of following it and, for the past few hundred years, it's done the job well enough to survive despite some fundamental failings.
And in practice, whatever anybody says, the interpretation of the Constitution has evolved massively over the country's history, even along supposedly originalist views. The most important ideas in the Constitution—say, the First Amendment—are intentionally under-specified; the full meaning of the First Amendment is not in its 45 words but in centuries of legal scholarship and judicial precedent. While the Amendment itself has a couple of centuries under its belt, its practical manifestation in American legal practice is at least as sophisticated and modern as anywhere else.
James Madison "Father of the Constitution" wrote the Constitution, Bill of Rights and co-wrote of the Federalist papers has a great insight in Federalist 10:
> It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The reason why people look to the founding papers and value them is because they are breaking away from tyranny, greed, monarchy, almost mafia state like control. They have interesting takes that are true in any power grab and warnings.
You can't write a Constitution as good as when you just went through revolution from tyranny. That is what changing it like the push for a Convention of States is trying to do is a dangerous thing while so divided. We are in a state of uncivil war, not unity over an external enemy, though maybe we should be.
The United States has the longest running form of government, I'd say it was architected pretty well. The Constitution is a good guide for setting up a system that allows depressurization. Western liberalized democratic republics allow for depressurization and waves and cycles to flow, some intense, some wonderful, some problematic, but return or escape from those eras. Authoritarianism does not, eventually authoritarianism blows up when the loyalty and leverage break down, there is no pressure release.
> The United States has the longest running form of government, I'd say it was architected pretty well. The Constitution is a good guide for setting up a system that allows depressurization.
The US Civil War (1861-1865) called, it would like to have a discussion about "depressurization."
The founding writings are fine examples of political philosophy, but the government that we have today in any western liberal democracy would be alien to those authors.
The United States today has a government informed by its constitution of 230 years ago, but it is equally informed by a long history of profound social change and (at times) bloodshed. The document of the 1780s can inspire, but there are better models to imitate if need be.
The interesting part here is that there is a record of public discourse that lead to the US Constitution. So you do not see just the product, but also the process that preceded it.
Also note that people do not just write constitution to satisfy their ideal image of constitution, they need to write such constitution that would be accepted by many citizens with differing ideas and goals. Especially when it is not a constitution of a unitary state, but federation. Last time we tried something similar, we ended with Treaty of Lisbon.
This view frustrates me because it ignores what the founders based the constitution on, namely, the history of governments across the world and philosophical underpinnings of the enlightenment and renaissance that enabled them. Madison in particular studied such a wide array of topics in his forumaltion of proposed systems that hardly anyone I know of even today could even come close in understanding the big picture view he did due to that study. Ask any modern politician about what philsopher was the main originator of the checks and balances system and I bet almost none of them would even know Montesquieu's name, much less have read him. The same for the people who then talk about the contitution as being some outdated document of rich slave owners that should be completely rewritten. It's just become a trope narrative to me that gets tiring to hear from those who love to pontificate on the subject without being more informed.
As for non-Americans, I think those foundational principles, if not the constitution itself, should be valued just as much elsewhere as they are in America (in theory at least). Perhaps I have a too naively positive a view of the extent of liberal education in Europe and elsewhere.
As Christopher Hitchens said: "The American Revolution, the one that says, build your public on individual rights, not group rights, have a bill of rights that inscribes these and makes theme legible to everybody, separate the church from the state, separate the executive from the judicial, and the political branch. Do all these things; It doesn't sound like much but it's really a very revolutionary idea. There is hardly a country in the world that wouldn't benefit from adopting those principles. I think that gives the United States a really good claim to be a revolutionary country as well as of course, paradoxically a very conservative one."
I agree, they started with a confederation and ended up with a republic realizing while a confederation was ideal, it would not survive. Now in saying that, we do have to take into account the times.
For example the separation of church and state, they really could not event envision in their time, that the government should have never been involved in the marriage issue in the first place as it is a religious institution. The government has a legal process for a group working as an entity and that is either a corporation or a trust. From the onset families and their legal rights should have been an inherent trust. This would have kept the religious dogma out of the gay marriage argument and left it to the denominations as to whether they want to sanction the ceremony of marriage or not.
Obviously slavery would be another issue, but again I see that as the times, as the people believed that a particular race was less than human. This was corrected via amendments but I don't think a different form of government, at the time, would have reached a more humanitarian conclusion. So we don't really get to ding the republic for it.
The problem I have is that the republic works very well, history is littered with the successes of the republic in offering prosperity to its people. The issue is that the republic by its very nature tends to generally gives way to empires. What we have now is an empire, it, in no way shape or form, resembles the original republic, with the exception of vestiges. so it is irksome to hear people lament the foundation as bad or not sufficient and utilize present day examples to do so. The American republic has been gone for a long time. The railroad barons chipped away at it, citizens united chipped away at it, the move to push more and more to the federal level chipped away at it and much, much more, to the extent that we no longer remotely resemble the foundational republic. The prescription is not to fundamentally change what we where, rather it is to take lessons learned and apply them to getting back to a true republic, with fixes to that original model. That is what the founders did, the studied Rome, they studied Greece and tried to account for the failings that they suffered and what allowed them to slide towards the empire and tyranny.
For what it's worth, I trace the main initiation of the change into the empire to who I consider the worst president in history, Woodrow Wilson. I think the real fight for America will be in pushing back against Wilsonianism enough to drastically shift the overton window in domestic and foreign policy, lest we suffer the consequences of not doing so. That said, to fix a lock that is broken, you have to understand how it works... so I find a lot of value in understanding exactly "how" Wilsonianism took hold so deeply, so quickly. The added complication is the major changes in the banking and monetary system since then also, I mean from that era we go from the creation of the fed, to the bretton woods system, to ww2 and later Nixons move towards the petrodollar. These are all major shifts in the backbone of any nation, empire or not, so a lot of my effort is trying to understand those things as well. I recently came across a particularly insightful talk by Yanis Varoufakis that really condensed a lot of these things well, you might check it out if thats the sort of thing that interests you.[1]
My personal opinion is it started with Polk (He is my personal vote for worst president ever, Wilson is second for me), Manifest Destiny and the idea of expansionism, it ebbed and flowed from there until Wilson but the seeds where set when Polk saw that he could use the federal government to expand the influence of the United States. But even with that there where the inclinations from the beginning. I mean the current state of America would have been a dream of Hamilton's, while it would have been Franklin's and Jefferson's worst nightmare of the dystopia, they were trying to prevent. The reality is we got it wrong, the federalist voices were too strong, while I will give that the articles of confederation were too weak, the compromise towards the federalist was too strong. We need to get back to something closer to a confederated republic and away from a federal empire.
It’s crazy, the people who wrote the constitution overturned a constitution that was only about a decade old. They certainly weren’t hung up on what Henry VIII had intended 250 years earlier.
RBG's basic idea is 1) the Constitution is dated and 2) that there are newer ideas we can glean from.
Firstly, at least as read one way, the first assertion is highly debatable because the principles of limited government, the checking of abuses and preventing tyranny through a careful system of checks and balances, the independence of the judiciary, the inability of the majority to rule on certain things (the Bill of Rights), etc are all timeless ideas. Their codification in the Constitution was the result of much political philosophy, deliberation and debate. It was also informed by history.
The Framers understood that 1) they had no guarantee that future people would be as wise and virtuous as they considered themselves to be and 2) democracy, while preferable to other systems of government, carries with it the risk of mob rule or tyranny of the majority. As a result, they drafted a written Constitution which, if ratified by the states, would serve as the legally binding document which prescribes exactly the manner in which the government encounters the individual. The rules set forth the structure of the government, how power is distributed among the various branches and how those powers are checked in order to maintain the primacy of the individual.
To put it simply: given that
a) the Framers thought very deeply about all the problems associated with this system of government and the best ways to resolve or minimize those problems
and given that
b) they had no way of knowing if people in the future would be as cautious, careful and diligent as they were in their thinking
and given that
c) mistakes and poor thinking in these matters tends to disfavor the individual whose rights they sought to protect
that therefore amending the Constitution should be very difficult and it should require an incredibly high level of agreement and consensus that can only be achieved through an abundance of deliberation, argumentation, etc. In other words, the system they designed which was so carefully considered should not be easy to change. The system simply isn't durable if in order for it to work, we must have faith that every generation which might come to adjust the system is at least as virtuous as the one which ratified the Constitution. On the other hand, the Framers were not so presumptuous as to think that they could have anticipated the needs of all future generations so it simply had to be possible to amend the Constitution under some circumstances. The high bar for ratification offers some protection against the risk that by bending to the passing political whims of every generation we bring about the disintegration of the system.
Put another way: the protective nature of the Constitution -- against government infringing on individual liberties, on the government devolving into tyranny, etc -- is inversely correlated with how flexible the system is.
_We_ might consider _our_ amendment aspirations to be good and virtuous and well-intentioned, but the power to amend does not go away when a new group of people who are less well-intentioned arises. Hence, the great difficulty of amending the Constitution hampers the bad actors, even if by so doing it also impedes "progress" sought by good people.
RBG doesn't seem to understand this or, at the very least, her comments quoted here reflect a lack of appreciation for this aspect of the system.
So, things have evolved, but not all of that evolution was positive. And one has to look at both the US Constitution and the Canadian CR&F to compare and contrast. You can't automatically assume that newer is better in all respects.
Interest in the Anti-Federalist papers is a recent phenomenon. In the 19th century one of their rare cites was in the Dred Scott decision, their second of the century. There were only five cites and no quotes for the entire 19th century. They were rarely cited until the 1960s. "From 1900 to 1959, the Court cited the Anti-Federalist Papers approximately once per decade." [1]
The Anti-Federalist papers are only interesting if you want to re-litigate federalism vs 'states rights'.
104 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] thread[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers
Federalists Audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SD8nzsQzIHnOi2zSTwP...
Anti-federalists Audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SD8nzsQzIFTKMY_Cbc5...
Federalist 1 - Introduction is so interesting to listen to in today's climate, good words for all to ponder on.
Sometimes it gets really funny, like in #54 (about the 3/5 Compromise), where the author clearly doesn't like the idea on its own all that much, and would prefer to not be seen as an ardent supporter of it - and thus, the retort itself is also written from a third person perspective: "... might one of our Southern brethren observe ... " etc.
I'm trying to justify purchasing The Complete Anti-Federalist by Herbert J. Storing on Google bookstore which costs $340. Seems pretty steep, however it looks like its the most authoritative source on the anti-federalist papers.
The US system though will never change as long as it's the global hegemon. Much like the British Empire, Roman Empire, Qi Dynasty, and Holy Roman Empire; these major players never ended up reforming until their total collapse. As much as anybody hates to see it, that is the only way for this system to be revised. There is a big pie for many to take a piece of in the US. It's why there are minimal united for change.
For example, he asserts that the 3 branches were intended to make the country less of a democracy.
Yes, the goal was a republic instead of a democracy because (as spelled out in the Federalist papers) pure democracies always wind up persecuting minorities (2 wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for dinner) and all historical democracies up to that point fell apart rather quickly. Limiting the power of any one person or cabal was of prime importance.
Beard rejects all these reasons as essentially true, but made up excuses (though history is not on his side). Instead, he claims it was to protect them from being overthrown by the masses.
He asserts that the constitution was an economic document. Of course this is true. It was trying to convince 13 countries to become one, unified country. It tried to guarantee it wouldn't interfere with things in the Bill of Rights. Once the constitution has established that it can't butt into people's moral business, all that is left is economics. They set down rules to keep one state from oppressing another, rules for foreign commerce, and left internal issues to the states. Beard doesn't say how the rules could be better, he just asserts that because most of the writers had money, they must have had nefarious reasons for establishing those rules.
Here's another example. The constitution says the US should pay it's debts. Beard asserts this is because Washington loaned money and wanted it back. Sure, this could be true, but it is also true that small, new countries guaranteeing to pay back money to lenders is paramount to securing loans in the first place.
Realty were his creation that was anyone without large amounts of liquid assets (this included land owners). Personalty were people with liquid assets and manufacturing power. He claims the realty were entirely suppressed by the personalty during the constitution's creation. He doesn't provide much hard evidence aside from very generic things like he thinks it was hard to collect farmer's votes or opinion pieces in various newspapers that were anti-federalist.
The federalists asserted that if the states didn't unite, they would slowly devolve into a bunch of little, squabbling countries that would be played against each other or outright conquered by the European powers. He has no answer.
He claimed repression of the realty, but many of the county's most famous people rose from nothing. In fact, the upward mobility of the US has exceeded every other country since it's inception. This contradicts his claim, yet he has no answer.
I would go so far as to say that he fails to justify any of his smears and that history both before and after 1913 has not been on his side.
[0] http://resources.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/Constitutional/...
Or, consider a future where some combination of Texas/Georgia/Arizona do what Colorado and Virginia did over the last decade, complete their urbanization and turn hard blue. In that world, we'd be looking at a very large democratic advantage in the EC.
Yeah, it's gotta be fixed. It just doesn't correspond well to the kind of population dynamics we have in the modern US. Nothing in the original constitution expected a country where both Wyoming and California could be a single "state". Call your reps and ask for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
The argument today says nothing about Democrats or Republicans, it just says the president should be whoever gets the most votes nationwide. So I don’t see how it “swings” both ways.
It's just silly. And it can produce antidemocratic outcomes on occasion, as it did in 2016.
The understanding I got out of it, was that over the last 200 years is that we've struck a balance between opening up sufferage, but rewriting fundamental abstractions such that the pre-eminence of only two political collectives can be be ontologically considered, ensuring that yet another check the Founders were counting on, Regional Factionalism would disappear as a mitigating factor to prevent the development of a "National Political Elite", much to the dismay of Hamilton and Madison.
So, yeah thanks for assuming a modern political caricature is enough to represent the full nuance of my position on a highly argued, oft misunderstood, and underappreciated topic on the mechanics, merits, and warts of the American political system. Really appreciate it.
All the stuff about electors being a safeguard etc was post hoc rationalization. I'm not even saying it was in bad faith - the people arguing that EC was a safeguard were doing it sincerely. But that's not why the idea got so much support.
The parties reshuffled after the Democrats adopted civil rights and the rise of Reagan shifted the balance in the Republican Party. The Dixiecrats (and non-southerners who think like them) largely became Republicans, and the Rockefeller Republicans largely became Democrats. The factions that believed in minority rule still believe it, but they are under different party flags now.
I'm not sure "it kind of evens out in the end, viewed over decades" is a great argument for it, really.
> Is it then become necessary, that a free people should first resign their right of suffrage into other hands besides their own, and then, secondly, that they to whom they resign it should be compelled to choose men, whose persons, characters, manners, or principles they know nothing of?
We no longer have a system where you vote for an elector who decides which presidential candidate to vote for. The electors in the electoral college execute a formality, they don't make decisions. The issues around electoral college vs. popular vote are not addressed in this paper.
> By the same means, he may render his suspensive power over the laws as operative and permanent as that of G. the 3d [George III] over the acts of the British parliament; and under the modest title of president, may exercise the combined authority of legislation and execution, in a latitude yet unthought of. Upon his being invested with those powers a second or third time, he may acquire such enormous influence -- as, added to his uncontrollable power over the army, navy, and militia; together with his private interest in the officers of all these different departments, who are all to be appointed by himself, and so his creatures, in the true political sense of the word; and more especially when added to all this, he has the power of forming treaties and alliances, and calling them to his assistance -- that he may, I say, under all these advantages and almost irresistible temptations, on some pretended pique, haughtily and contemptuously, turn our poor lower house (the only shadow of liberty we shall have left) out of doors, and give us law at the bayonet's point. Or, may not the senate, who are nearly in the same situation, with respect to the people, from similar motives and by similar means, erect themselves easily into an oligarchy, towards which they have already attempted so large a stride? To one of which channels, or rather to a confluence of both, we seem to be fast gliding away; and the moment we arrive at it -- farewell liberty. . . .
Thanks to people like the Anti-Federalists, both the writers behind the papers and the larger segment of society that was against the Constitution, a Bill of Rights was promised during the ratification debates, and then drafted and passed by the Congress and then ratified by sufficient States. The system works, better than we sometimes like to give it credit for.
EDIT: fixed wording
Well, Articles 2-12 of the proposed Bill of Rights were ratified by the States (Congress proposes amendments but does not ratify them), though Article 2 only after quite an extended period had elapsed from it's proposal.
Right you are. I took a poor shortcut in my writing, but I’ve gone back and fixed the wording.
Thankfully so, given recent events.
In theory, Trump received 306 EC votes in 2016 to Clinton’s 232[1]. In reality it was 304 for Trump, 227 for Clinton, 3 for Colin Powell, 1 for Bernie Sanders, 1 for John Kasich, 1 for Ron Paul, 1 for Faith Spotted Eagle[2]. There were 3 others that voted faithlessly but those votes were invalidated by their State’s, one of them changed his vote back to who he pledged for, and the others were replaced with alternates. Some faithless votes on the Vice Presidential vote as well, but refer back to [2] for those.
[1] https://www.270towin.com/maps/2016-actual-electoral-map
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016...
What I find lacking about that argument is the principle also applies to Congress, just change "choose men" to "pass laws".
The apportioning of Electoral Votes is identical to that of Congressional seats.
The method of filling Electoral seats (decided by state legislature) is identical to how Senatorial seats were filled prior to passage of the 17th Amendment.
With all that, I think it's fair to think of the electoral College as a single-use, single-purpose Congress. I wonder if starting with that as a prior would improve discussions about changing the EC.
"Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America3; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."
"But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy."
Hamilton wrote it about the one-state-one-vote arrangement under...
More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers
Which concludes:
> The Anti-Federalists proved unable to stop the ratification of the US Constitution, which took effect in 1789. Since then, the essays they wrote have largely fallen into obscurity. Unlike, for example, The Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison, none of their works are mainstays in college curricula or court rulings. The influence of their writing, however, can be seen to this day – particularly in the nature and shape of the United States Bill of Rights.
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text
My short review of the book would read;
"It is not just an excellent display of political knowledge, nor just an astute vision of governance, but mostly an acknowledgement and exposé on human nature. "
I am from Australia and wish we taught it in schools also.
I didn't know there were Anti-Federalist Papers so time to buy some more wine and get going.
Note: Ben Shapiro does a nice video on what the Federalist Papers are about.
====
It was one of the harder reads I've done such that it almost feels like a life accomplishment.
I'd personally recommend just googling the top 5-10, choosing some that you like and just listening to the audio book versions e.g. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PiSeeJQkrQ
I always prefer reading myself but in this case my comprehension was slightly better just listening to some of the essays.
====
“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.” - Hamilton
While I actively seek pundits/academics/scholars I disagree with to avoid existing in a thought-bubble I also try to avoid those whom have espoused racist views in the past. You lose legitimacy in my eyes once you demonstrate that you are a racist.
He use to have a list of "Giant List Of All The Dumb Stuff I’ve Ever Done".
And that tweet was on there, he said something along the lines of it was also out of context.
But as you said, keep following your own morale compass.
This seems to be a frequent excuse these days, and rarely comes with an explanation of what the context was. I'm not sure what kind of context you can add to that statement that makes it mean something else.
But there is no "supposed to be taught" -- anyone who knows American history knows that, for federal reasons, educational curricula are set at state or even local levels. Your school district appears to be highly unusual... and I'm pretty amazed at the concept of teaching this in middle school. May I ask where you went, out of both curiosity and envy? ;)
The relevant Wikipedia article even states:
> ...the essays they wrote have largely fallen into obscurity. Unlike, for example, The Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison, none of their works are mainstays in college curricula or court rulings. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I had any appreciation for the human side of it all and how it was so much more than things that happened before I was born.
So, to be fair, it’s entirely possible this was part of our education and I just reserved zero synapses to its retention.
These Anti-Federalist Papers seem a bit more accessible, but part of my interest is in understanding the motivation of the writing of the constitution, and it seems there is no better source for that than the Federalist Papers.
I don’t have any annotated versions of the Federalist Papers I can recommend, but The Heritage Foundation has one of the better web annotations of the Constitution[1]. Scroll through and you’ll find various clauses accompanied with full essays in the little “i” icons.
What you may also find helpful is context for the why and the how of the Constitution, as in why did the Articles of Confederation need to be replaced and how did the Constitutional Convention decide to replace them and how they went about replacing them. National Review hosts Constitutionally Speaking[2], and the hosts of the show keep trying to bring it back in various ways but they finished with what they initially promised by the end of Episode 41.
[1] https://www.heritage.org/constitution/
[2] https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/constitutionally-spe...
The upside is that if you get used to reading texts from this era, other writers of the time period become more accessible as well. For example, I recently read many of the sermons of Jon Wesley and found them to be an easier read than I was expecting, perhaps due to my exposure to the federalist papers and others.
They're a fun to flip through, as some of the predictions almost read like alternate history fictions, because they're just so wild.
One essay I found particularly amusing (wish I could remember which paper said it), argued that the complexity of the legislative branch was clearly intended to to create endless demand for lawyers, thus ensuring that the lawyer career path would be prestigious and well-paid forever.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jan. 30, 2012:
>You should certainly be aided by all the constitution writing that has gone on since the end of World War II. I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa — that was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recently than the U.S. Constitution, Canada has the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. So, yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world?
Yeah, it's pretty weird.
I wasn't taught that in history class. I was just taught the facts you described: that the compromise was made because it was the only way to get agreement at the convention on how the national legislature should be organized.
According to what parameter? Is there any objective manner in which bicameral parliaments fare better than unicameral ones?
Obtaining & maintaining consent of the governed being one of the most critical features of a representative government.
The Westminster system is supposedly the basis for my country (Australia's) parliament but I believe we also have taken influences from other systems and have incorporated some things that aren't common anywhere else (like compulsory voting) our constitution comes from 1901.
I could be wrong, but I think the main difference Between US system and ours is how the leader is appointed. The US directly votes for president, where as here the winning party (Based on number of Lower House seats won) appoints the leader. Our Prime Minister is much more beholden to the party he belongs to where in US presidents gets to Veto stuff - I think.
In the US, laws are initiated in the House. If they pass the vote, they go to the Senate which must also vote to pass them. Finally, the President signs them into action or vetoes (which can be overridden by a 2/3 majority).
The Shay's Rebellion had a huge influence on the government design. The majority (all the farmers) agreed that they could vote to force the minority (the banks) to forgive their debts. Several of the earlier Federalist papers go over the many, many democracies that failed (usually for this very reason).
Voters actually elect people as state electors. Those electors come together to cast the actual vote for the president (with backups in case of election issues as this election is likely to require). The minimum number of electors gives slightly disproportionate power to less-populated states. Quite literally, the Constitution gives louder voices to minority areas.
We see this same idea in the Senate. States are equal members of the union no matter if they are large or small and the Senate gives them this power. Even the largest states (population-wise) can't just force through legislation to their exclusive benefit.
We're not looking to the past for guidance. We're looking at what the Constitution says because it is still the supreme law of the land. People who think some provision of that supreme law of the land should be changed can propose amendments; the US Constitution has already been amended 27 times. But you're not supposed to just pretend that the law doesn't apply because you don't like what it says.
> All that was a long time ago and things have evolved.
And the US Constitution has been amended where necessary to take that into account. We amended the Constitution to abolish slavery, to give women the right to vote, to have Senators elected by the people of their states instead of the legislatures, to eliminate poll taxes, to limit how many terms a President can serve. And we can continue to amend the Constitution where necessary to fix other issues. That is how people who want to take Justice Ginsburg's advice and take advantage of advances other countries have made should do that.
It isn't difficult if you have general agreement that a particular amendment is needed. What makes it seem difficult to get passage of particular amendments that particular special interest groups have proposed is that there is not general agreement that they are needed. And in that situation, the amendment should not be passed--and that's exactly how the Founders set things up. That's why they required a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress to send an amendment to the States for ratification, and three-fourths of the States to ratify it in order to have it in force.
> The most recent Amendment took 202 years to ratify
That was an anomaly; no other amendment has taken anything close to that long. And that particular one probably could have been passed sooner, except that once it got left out of the original Bill of Rights, it was forgotten.
This is a deceptive picture to paint. That amendment was an outlier in respect. There are only 3/27 amendments that took more than 3 years to pass and 2 of them were passed faster than 4 years. The mean is 8.94 years and if you remove the 27th the average was 1.44 years. We also have an average of 8.2 years between the amendments (counting from 1789).
This reinforces my point. The last meaningful amendment (the 27th affecting only a couple hundred people, after all) was in 1971, and I suspect quite a few of the amendments in the 60s/70s would have a tremendously uphill battle if on the table in today's political climate.
The point here is that your comment implies that that amendments are few and far between and you used an outlier to make that point. That statement was woefully misleading. Which frankly isn't going to fly on HN.
Which ones?
The 23rd, 24th, and 26th amendments would all likely meet strong Republican opposition if proposed today.
When 51% want something, it shouldn’t be so. It should necessarily require more buy in.
That’s precisely why the states were largely expected to govern themselves with federal power being less extreme. The divide that we see in the country today is caused by two sides trying to force their way on each other rather than allowing states to just...disagree.
We’d all be a lot better off if our states ran the way we wanted and simply turned our nose up and joked about the ones we didn’t agree with, than trying to constantly force those other states to do things our way.
When we discuss the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, we are looking to the past for guidance.
Every single time I end up I a discussion about the electoral college it returns to “the founders knew what they were doing.” There is absolutely a reverence for the popular perception of the founders and the idea that it were possible for them to be completely wrong is just not viable in the discourse today.
If the legislative branch wishes to amend The Constitution, there is a procedure for that, including a wholesale rewriting of it (Constitutional Convention). We've amended it via 27 amendments, substantially altering its structure.
And in practice, whatever anybody says, the interpretation of the Constitution has evolved massively over the country's history, even along supposedly originalist views. The most important ideas in the Constitution—say, the First Amendment—are intentionally under-specified; the full meaning of the First Amendment is not in its 45 words but in centuries of legal scholarship and judicial precedent. While the Amendment itself has a couple of centuries under its belt, its practical manifestation in American legal practice is at least as sophisticated and modern as anywhere else.
> It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The reason why people look to the founding papers and value them is because they are breaking away from tyranny, greed, monarchy, almost mafia state like control. They have interesting takes that are true in any power grab and warnings.
You can't write a Constitution as good as when you just went through revolution from tyranny. That is what changing it like the push for a Convention of States is trying to do is a dangerous thing while so divided. We are in a state of uncivil war, not unity over an external enemy, though maybe we should be.
The United States has the longest running form of government, I'd say it was architected pretty well. The Constitution is a good guide for setting up a system that allows depressurization. Western liberalized democratic republics allow for depressurization and waves and cycles to flow, some intense, some wonderful, some problematic, but return or escape from those eras. Authoritarianism does not, eventually authoritarianism blows up when the loyalty and leverage break down, there is no pressure release.
The Vatican is likely to disagree.
The US Civil War (1861-1865) called, it would like to have a discussion about "depressurization."
The founding writings are fine examples of political philosophy, but the government that we have today in any western liberal democracy would be alien to those authors.
The United States today has a government informed by its constitution of 230 years ago, but it is equally informed by a long history of profound social change and (at times) bloodshed. The document of the 1780s can inspire, but there are better models to imitate if need be.
I don't think this is true. First constitutions after tyranny tend to have fatal flaws, sometimes costing democracy itself.
You write better constitution when you learn from other constitutions and have experience with that.
Also note that people do not just write constitution to satisfy their ideal image of constitution, they need to write such constitution that would be accepted by many citizens with differing ideas and goals. Especially when it is not a constitution of a unitary state, but federation. Last time we tried something similar, we ended with Treaty of Lisbon.
As for non-Americans, I think those foundational principles, if not the constitution itself, should be valued just as much elsewhere as they are in America (in theory at least). Perhaps I have a too naively positive a view of the extent of liberal education in Europe and elsewhere.
As Christopher Hitchens said: "The American Revolution, the one that says, build your public on individual rights, not group rights, have a bill of rights that inscribes these and makes theme legible to everybody, separate the church from the state, separate the executive from the judicial, and the political branch. Do all these things; It doesn't sound like much but it's really a very revolutionary idea. There is hardly a country in the world that wouldn't benefit from adopting those principles. I think that gives the United States a really good claim to be a revolutionary country as well as of course, paradoxically a very conservative one."
For example the separation of church and state, they really could not event envision in their time, that the government should have never been involved in the marriage issue in the first place as it is a religious institution. The government has a legal process for a group working as an entity and that is either a corporation or a trust. From the onset families and their legal rights should have been an inherent trust. This would have kept the religious dogma out of the gay marriage argument and left it to the denominations as to whether they want to sanction the ceremony of marriage or not.
Obviously slavery would be another issue, but again I see that as the times, as the people believed that a particular race was less than human. This was corrected via amendments but I don't think a different form of government, at the time, would have reached a more humanitarian conclusion. So we don't really get to ding the republic for it.
The problem I have is that the republic works very well, history is littered with the successes of the republic in offering prosperity to its people. The issue is that the republic by its very nature tends to generally gives way to empires. What we have now is an empire, it, in no way shape or form, resembles the original republic, with the exception of vestiges. so it is irksome to hear people lament the foundation as bad or not sufficient and utilize present day examples to do so. The American republic has been gone for a long time. The railroad barons chipped away at it, citizens united chipped away at it, the move to push more and more to the federal level chipped away at it and much, much more, to the extent that we no longer remotely resemble the foundational republic. The prescription is not to fundamentally change what we where, rather it is to take lessons learned and apply them to getting back to a true republic, with fixes to that original model. That is what the founders did, the studied Rome, they studied Greece and tried to account for the failings that they suffered and what allowed them to slide towards the empire and tyranny.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGeevtdp1WQ
Firstly, at least as read one way, the first assertion is highly debatable because the principles of limited government, the checking of abuses and preventing tyranny through a careful system of checks and balances, the independence of the judiciary, the inability of the majority to rule on certain things (the Bill of Rights), etc are all timeless ideas. Their codification in the Constitution was the result of much political philosophy, deliberation and debate. It was also informed by history.
The Framers understood that 1) they had no guarantee that future people would be as wise and virtuous as they considered themselves to be and 2) democracy, while preferable to other systems of government, carries with it the risk of mob rule or tyranny of the majority. As a result, they drafted a written Constitution which, if ratified by the states, would serve as the legally binding document which prescribes exactly the manner in which the government encounters the individual. The rules set forth the structure of the government, how power is distributed among the various branches and how those powers are checked in order to maintain the primacy of the individual.
To put it simply: given that
a) the Framers thought very deeply about all the problems associated with this system of government and the best ways to resolve or minimize those problems
and given that
b) they had no way of knowing if people in the future would be as cautious, careful and diligent as they were in their thinking
and given that
c) mistakes and poor thinking in these matters tends to disfavor the individual whose rights they sought to protect
that therefore amending the Constitution should be very difficult and it should require an incredibly high level of agreement and consensus that can only be achieved through an abundance of deliberation, argumentation, etc. In other words, the system they designed which was so carefully considered should not be easy to change. The system simply isn't durable if in order for it to work, we must have faith that every generation which might come to adjust the system is at least as virtuous as the one which ratified the Constitution. On the other hand, the Framers were not so presumptuous as to think that they could have anticipated the needs of all future generations so it simply had to be possible to amend the Constitution under some circumstances. The high bar for ratification offers some protection against the risk that by bending to the passing political whims of every generation we bring about the disintegration of the system.
Put another way: the protective nature of the Constitution -- against government infringing on individual liberties, on the government devolving into tyranny, etc -- is inversely correlated with how flexible the system is.
_We_ might consider _our_ amendment aspirations to be good and virtuous and well-intentioned, but the power to amend does not go away when a new group of people who are less well-intentioned arises. Hence, the great difficulty of amending the Constitution hampers the bad actors, even if by so doing it also impedes "progress" sought by good people.
RBG doesn't seem to understand this or, at the very least, her comments quoted here reflect a lack of appreciation for this aspect of the system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
So, things have evolved, but not all of that evolution was positive. And one has to look at both the US Constitution and the Canadian CR&F to compare and contrast. You can't automatically assume that newer is better in all respects.
The Anti-Federalist papers are only interesting if you want to re-litigate federalism vs 'states rights'.
[1] https://www.law.ua.edu/pubs/lrarticles/Volume%2063/Issue%205...