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Earlier threads:

7 Happily for mankind, liberty is not in this respect confined to any single point of time, but lies within extremes which afford sufficient latitude for all the variations which may be required by the various situations and circumstances of civil society.

Okay, so I’m reading this and I’m tempted to talk about the ideas percolating at the time about church governance and Kant’s writings which were perhaps the most profound ideas of the time. In essence the idea is truth is forever and when looking for it, "Two heads are better than one."

But then I run into this reasoning,

13 Here is a difference, as four to one, between the longest and shortest periods, and yet it would be not easy to show that Connecticut or Rhode Island is better governed or enjoys a greater share of rational liberty than South Carolina, or that either the one or the other of these states is distinguished in these respects, and by these causes from the states whose elections are different from both.

Gah! He is using a circumstantial situation to justify his argument. He did not know that electing representatives every two years was the same as every six months, forever. I think this Federalist begins weakly.

33 The question then may be put into this simple form: does the period of two years bear no greater proportion to the knowledge requisite for federal legislation than one year does to the knowledge requisite for state legislation?

I once read an article on the problem with short-term state legislatures. While the representatives themselves may only be in session for two months (or whatever) the lobbyists are working year round on legislation. When newly elected representatives come to office, they are presented a menu of bills to choose from, all written by the lobbyists. Some of them might be good, some are bad but all of them are the proposal of self-interested parties. I think there is a good argument to be made for legislatures given the time to reason through all their choices before voting. Then again, perhaps short, easily understood laws are better laws.

Reading 35 through 51, I remember that I think there is one constant theme in Madison’s papers. He wanted a strong, able House of Representatives

Reading 57 through 64, it is clear that circumstances have changed with telephones, mass media and the internet. Everyone knows what everyone else is thinking (aside from real secrets of course).

What Madison is suggesting is that the discipline forced on a government by annual elections may be safely replaced by the discipline accorded by a written Constitution. Madison argues that this will allow the federal government of the United States some breathing room. It is essentially an argument not that two years is better than one, but that the United States will be able to get away with it because Congress will not be empowered to turn that two into seven or seventeen or thirty-seven. It is an indirect argument at best.

I agree. . . . at best.

a certain skepticism on the part of the reader naturally arises in the face of the menagerie of exotic fauna that actually constitutes a modern Congress.

I see no reason to bring Barney Frank into the discussion.

In the face of recurring demands for term limits and the demonstrable advantages of incumbency, it is a conclusion that must still be regarded as provisional at best.

Again, I agree.

One point regarding term limits. One unintended consequence of term limits is that the legislators spend time building their nest eggs while in office. They create a body of commissions, think tanks and agencies so that when they do lose their jobs, they have some place to go. I'll reply later with Benjamin Franklin's warnings about representatives while in office. It's prescient.

Discussion Topic

At 28, Madison points out that a legislator must have some knowledge of the subjects on which he is to legislate. Thus, he shouldn’t have to pass a bill into law to find out what is in it. The preparation of bills by lobbyists and bureaucrats, then rammed through Congress, appears to be outside Madison’s idea of how legislatures should work. What can be done to fix this problem?

I have ideas on this. First and foremost, we have to know what is going on in congress. That means there must be a group of people (I’m looking at you retired Tea Party-ers) That sits in on committee hearings and presses the hell out of our congress critters to divulge all their secrets. They need to issue non-partisan grades on representatives’ willingness to cooperate. There is a lady in SC that does this and for the life of me, I can’t remember her full name but Mary comes to mind. I can’t think of anyone who does this on the Federal level. We are smart enough. FreeRepublic is a start. There just aren’t enough of us doing it. Not yet.

Second, we need to press them to be more open in their proceedings. Boehner commented on Pelosi’s ways at the AEI forum last week and the need to follow the committee structure rather than having the leadership write the bills in secret. That would help.

Third, there is a need to grade the bills on simplicity and clarity. Obscure, complex laws are a threat to representative government.

The Washington experts might be right, maybe we are too stupid to understand the bills. But that is the problem, if we are too stupid. The solution is not to elect an elite to do our business but to simplify the laws down to our level of understanding.

Good work bump.

5.56mm