Madison in Fed. 41 is clearly and completely wrong. He’s so wrong it’s comical. And it didn’t take long to get there. He was proven wrong in the First Congress, under the first presidential administration. And he has been confirmed wrong in the 200 plus years since. It’s hard to think of a framer more wrong more often than Madison.
Show logically where Madison was wrong. Cite logic, not events, in doing so. For in citing events, as you have been doing right along, you confess that the fault for the tragedy our Republic has become, lies not at the feet of a document but at the feet of men’s behavior (more properly, their misbehavior).
It’s difficult to think of anyone who could have been less perspicacious than the Anti-federalists in their belief that they could somehow gain greater freedom for themselves by forcing the Constitution into so narrow a constraint that it could only function to no effect. That’s what the Antifederalists wanted from the beginning.
But they forgot that they enjoyed the degree of freedom they had (and every prospect of an even greater freedom in the future) each in their own little local colonies, because they enjoyed the protection of Great Britain from the threats of the greater world beyond their narrow little horizons. When they threw off the yoke of British oppression, they also removed its protection. Yet, somehow, the Anti-federalists thought they could go on as before. They each needed a pair of Doctor Franklin’s glasses. They could not see past the end of next week.