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Ping! The thread has been posted.

Earlier threads:

A BTT for the morning crowd. The argument is slowly coalescing around two points of view: that of Hamilton and Madison (and their allies) that the current system would lead to internal conflict and overall weakness that would place the new nation at the mercy of foreign interests, and that of certain less well-identified critics (Clinton, Yates, Mason, Monroe, Henry, and Sam Adams) that a government with sufficient concentration of power to accomplish that would trend inevitably toward despotism.

I think it is probable that both sides were correct. The real world is, after all, rather more complicated than the simplifications inherent to political theory. Indeed, a number of the Founders including nearly everyone listed above found themselves trying to maneuver between the two positions. And so, what middle course could they find that might avoid both sets of hazards? That's where this is going.

What we got out of it was a Bill of Rights. The contention of the Hamilton camp was that it was unnecessary inasmuch as the federal government could only act within those powers enumerated in the Constitution. That's easier for us to laugh at now given two centuries of hindsight, but even to the critics of the day it was obvious that it wouldn't go down that way. The contention of the critics, Mason especially, was that a Bill of Rights was the only thing that might prevent it - in fact, it only delayed it - and that instead of only the one function of delineating citizen's inviolable rights, a Bill of Rights would also function to force the federal government back to an arena within the enumerated powers. And so it did, more or less.

It is this dynamic tension between necessary powers and inviolable rights that encompasses not only the argument over the proposed Constitution, but all of American political theory and behavior since then. Small corrections for small encroachments are beneficial to the overall polity - large encroachments, even over time, are apt to be addressed by large and disruptive corrections. Unfortunately gradual encroachments do not seem to be historically remediated by gradual increases of liberty; the ratchet seems to work only in the direction of increasing power for those turning the handle, until something breaks. And when it breaks, things do tend to get disruptive. Whether we've reached that point yet is a topic as much under discussion today as it was for the Founders.

I don’t think that Westphalia is analogous to anything, being a very messy pile of slop and engineered by persons whose primary desires were not in the best interests of the various Germanic states. Since I haven’t skipped any chapters yet, I’ll wonder if Hamilton plans further use for this same example of what happens to weak groups that call themselves nations.