Posted on 07/29/2011 5:24:35 PM PDT by Schatze
Our fourth president, James Madison, has been called the father of the Constitution for considerable reasons. He was highly educated, widely read, and well regarded. Ever the prescient student of history, Madison was able to describe in February 1788 the precise reasons why his beloved republic would fare so badly 223 years later in 2011. In Federalist No. 62his explanation of the Senatewe find an amazingly clear prediction of how badly Washington, D.C., has gone off track. Madison understood that democratic governments like our own often suffer from the malady of unfaithful elected officials.
It is a misfortune [sic] incident to republican government, Madison wrote, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.
The writers of the Constitution intended the Senate to help keep the federal government on track, serving as a salutary check on the government. The Senate, they proposed, would serve as a check on the populist passions of the House of Representatives and possibly an overzealous president. It would slow the wheels of government and keep the interests of the states alive in the halls of Congress. It became known as the most deliberative body in the world exactly for this reason.
Originally, senators were appointed by state legislatures in order to represent the interests of the states. Since the members of the House were elected by state voters to represent their interests, electing senators seemed duplicative. After all, with the whole of the people electing the president and the individual voters of each district electing their representative, it seemed the voters got plenty of representation. The states needed their interests protected and so senators were appointed by state assemblies.
That delicate balance ended in 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment altered the original plan and made provisions for voters to directly elect members of the Senate just as they do their House members. No more were the states represented in Washington, and as each decade passed into the future, politicians began more and more to forget their obligations to their constituents, as Madison so lamented.
Noting that any person that is inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan, at all is marked at once as a victim to his own unsteadiness and folly, Madison insisted that governments that act similarly forfeit the respect and confidence of everyone.
Every nation, consequently, whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability, may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of their wiser neighbors.
Madison is right that nobody likes or trusts a flighty fool. But Madison was not merely waxing philosophically. He saw his own fledgling nation treading that destructive path under the feckless Articles of Confederation, a path the new Constitution would correct.
But the best instruction on this subject is unhappily conveyed to America by the example of her own situation. She finds that she is held in no respect by her friends; that she is the derision of her enemies; and that she is a prey to every nation which has an interest in speculating on her fluctuating councils and embarrassed affairs.
Prior to the ratification of the Constitution, the United States was floundering due to its ineffective national government. Madison saw the Articles of Confederation as a complete failure offering no stability for his nascent nation. But as he went on to explain why the Constitution would be better than what they had in the Articles, Madison seems to be describing exactly the situation we are confronted with today.
Today, we are faced with a government that no one can count on. It is capricious, constantly changing, and grabbing new power for itself nearly every month. Businesses cannot make plans for the future as they live in fear that those plans will be ruined by the next government power grab. Greedy politicians are more interested in power for themselves and their party than they are about governing us. They exhibit a supreme arrogance that only comes from those who feel they are accountable to no one but themselves. Additionally, as these oppressive government tendrils reach further into our lives, we find the only ones who benefit are lobbyists who skillfully guide the next set of rules. Sadly, the people are either the last to benefit or dont benefit at all.
Read, then, Madisons description of a failed state and compare it to our predicament.
The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
Madison noted other consequences of these calamitous failures:
Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.
Do these passages sound familiar? Remember when Nancy Pelosi insisted we had to pass Obamas budget-bloating healthcare bill so that we could know whats in it? We have senators and members of the house insisting they cant be expected to actually read the bills they are voting on. We have dozens of bills floating from one unaccountable committee to another until no one is sure what is at what stage of consideration. We have government convening in the dead of night to slip things past the people. We have thousands of documents dumped on Friday evenings so that no one sees them. We also have federal agencies issuing reams of new regulatory changes every month with little, if any accountability. Madisons description of a calamitous government poisoning the blessing of liberty is no exercise in philosophy. It is a precise description of our current governing climate. Were it not for their elegance, one would think Madisons words were ripped from todays news.
Madison continued:
The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.
The end result is that the people themselves no longer have a bond of affection to their government.
But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people. No government will long be respected without being truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.
With approval ratings of congresses and presidents at all-time lows and voter turnout a trickle of what it should be, who cant see that the people have lost reverence and attachment to their government?
But, we must ask ourselves, what is the solution to our ills? Is Madisons Constitution itself at fault? Of course not, for we have not had Madisons Constitution for well over a hundred years. Weve allowed his blueprint to become bastardized, warped, and made a shadow of its former self. And weve strayed far from our founding principles, refusing to heed the warnings outlined in the Federalist Papers.
The only solution is to begin a systematic trimming of government. Scores of federal employees and their departments need to be summarily eliminated. Pensions must be canceled. Programs must be ended, departments snuffed out. We need to force our politicians to adhere to the Constitution and insist they justify their policies by pointing to the specific clause telling them their actions are constitutional. We need to begin impeaching judges far more than we do. In short, we need to start taking government out of our lives, not involving it more. But above all we need to change attitudes. Today, our politicians think we are their servants. We need to remind them of who controls whom. We need to remind them as James Madison would have reminded them.
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer and has reported on national and local politics for a decade. He has appeared on several major television and radio programs, and his work has appeared in some of the nations top newspapers, and he currently writes for conservative Internet mogul Andrew Breitbart.
Well he did not like John Adams which helped get Jefferson elected. Hamilton was a fine person, but his insistence that the common man was incapable of self-rule was arrogant. Hamilton's strong central stance of tax and spend is a turn-off. Also, his ‘Gazette of the United States’ was filled with inaccuracies and hyperbole.
All of the founders had their human limitations. We have a tendancy to want them to fit our political molds of our era and that is a natural short-sightedness.
Adams is my “essential” man from early to later years. But even when we damn Paine for the French era, we have to take his early inpirational Common Sense as helpful and catching the spirit that was in the air.
We can go back to James Otis or forward to James Randolph of Roanoke and find early patriots and founders that despite contributions at a certain time in their life had periods of outright deficiencies as functioning public people. Our own age has such as the last years of Goldwater make clear.
And as long as the thread starts off with Madison, the “Last of the Fathers” is a great read on him for those that are looking for one.
Jefferson’s treatment of Burr was far more tyrannical than anything that occurred under the Federalists. While it has been virtually swept under the rug by the dominant history, it is an incredible story. What is mysterious is why Jefferson did it.
Callender was a loose cannon who eventually had Jefferson in his sights. It was he who broke the Sally Hemmings story. Jefferson had learned through Hamilton’s reaction to the Maria Reynolds scandal to keep his mouth shut. H, on the other hand, went and wrote a sixty or seventy page pamphlet confessing to the affair and forever ended any chance of becoming president.
What is lost in the Hemmings story is the fact that she was a half-sister to his beloved wife and virtually white. She must have reminded him of Martha a great deal. I don’t view this as a exploitative relationship nor condemn Jefferson for it. It appears to having been a loving one but, so far out of the acceptable at the time, as to have a tragic dimension to it. Sally’s family was the only slaves on the plantation freed by his will and several of her children were allowed to “escape”. One of her sons even learned the violin which Jefferson played prior to an accident in France which ruined his grip.
Genet became an embarrassment to Jefferson (”...he will sink the Republican interest if they do not abandon him.”)and he had to cut ties because Washington had explicitly forbidden Genet from outfitting privateers or bringing French prizes to American ports. He proceeded to do just AND try and raise the masses against Washington himself. J had no option and only regretted Genet’s lack of tact and understanding. Don’t forget Jefferson was still part of Washington’s cabinet at that time so he had to be somewhat circumspect since he was already betraying Washington in a number of other areas. A betrayal which earned Washington’s Olympian scorn thereafter.
Not only did the Jeffersonians oppose neutrality but he convinced Madison to “enter the lists” against Hamilton in the “Pacificus vs. Helvidius” series of articles. Madison wouldn’t try that again.
Formation of the Democratic-Republican Societies were another means of carrying on pro-French propaganda. There is no question that the Republicans were consistently pro-French and anti-British. Whereas, all Americans were initially happy to see the French Revolution Federalist support dropped away when it became terrible violent and the Reign of Terror began. But the Republicans remained pro-French.
The danger of disunion was so great that Hamilton spent most of Washington’s Farewell Address on Neutrality, and the folly of secession. It was a warning against taking the side of France in the wars. And you need to consider that H was in no way anti-French. His first language was French and his mother was French. Some of his closest friends during the War were the French officers sent over to fight with us. It was to Hamilton that Lafayette spent his young son when the Reign of Terror was raging.
But he feared and resisted the turbulent character of the French people as reflected in their revolution as opposed to ours. His regard for the British was because their government combined freedom and security. And to him security, considering the irregular nature of his birth and upbringing, was of foremost concern. That was the source and limit of his pro-British feelings.
“Well he did not like John Adams which helped get Jefferson elected.” That is certainly true but it was not a public opposition. Burr had a private letter filched from the mails and had it printed in the papers. It was very careless of H to allow Burr to do this since he knew exactly what Burr was.
“...but his insistence that the common man was incapable of self-rule was arrogant.” This is not true he was always a republican and proposed and supported the idea of having the widest electorate elect the House of Representatives. He did not believe democracy could survive the masses and that appears to have been borne out by our recent experience.
As to his “arrogance” he was not a man who suffered fools easily but when some one became his friend he generally remained one for the rest of his life. He was extremely charming, handsome, generous and persuasive as well. No one communicated directly with the public than did Hamilton who frequently represented poor clients for no fee including escaped slaves. But lets be real who would be more arrogant than the Virginian planters?
The “Gazette” was not Hamilton’s paper though he wrote for it. His writings were not full of the faults you cite. However, all the papers of that day were but they all acknowledged their political bias.
His policies were intended to create wealth (and they did) and to make sure our nation survived (and it did) nothing more. His bitter experience at Valley Forge taught him a very valuable lesson that a government without revenue is contemptible and worse than useless. Because the state governments were stronger than the General government we were on the edge of defeat throughout the War, thus he recognized, while still Washington’s chief aide, that strengthening the National government was critical to our survival, not because of a love of government but because of the demands of sovereignty.
“All of the founders had their human limitations.” Indeed, they did. And they were all born into situations which circumscribed their thoughts and actions.
I loved the “John Adams” miniseries on HBO. His jealousies and suspicions weakened him a lot. I wonder what he would have been without Abigail, though.
Paine had an alcohol problem which eventually ruined him.
I will keep my eye out for that book. I have a couple of less than satisfactory bio of Madison but they don’t get into much detail.
What a guy like Robert Morris? Absolutely critical in the financing of the Revolution yet winds up in a debtors prison. How is that for irony?
“Where did I say Hamilton was anti-French?” You didn’t I was only giving a little background on him.
“Washington failed to kick out the British troops on the frontier (Even though they were required to leave) which got more complicated after the Jay Treaty passed.” We had no means of doing so, our army dissolved after the war and was hapless until Mad Anthony Wayne took command after a disastrous defeat by the Indians in the West. We were in no condition financially to fight another war. We had to grin and bear it for a while as we did the seizures of ships by both the British and the French. Had we the wherewithal we could have gone to war with either nation.
H didn’t think the President should be like a King he merely pointed out the a president served the same kind of role AS a King in many respects.
“Perpetual” debt I don’t see as a Hamiltonian idea just securing the availability of debt if needed by careful and prudent handling of our debt. None of the debts created by his reform were perpetual unlike the English consols. Maybe you can elaborate what you are referring to?
“Hamilton's paper” as in his method of public attack and Jefferson's paper “National Gazette” like wise. An expression, not everything is “literal” though he did help with “expenses” from time to time.
Also, in terms of direction, Hamilton policies produced debt. Debt and creditors evolve into monsters, monsters have no national loyalties, only to themselves and their vast wealth influences government policy. You mention Valley Forge I will mention the Bank of Britain's influence on government and destruction of democracy which Jefferson alluded to. With big government and big business, you get K Street pimps and statesmen who turn into whores. That is the legacy of Hamilton's vision.
So, Washington rallied to squash the Whiskey Rebellion but yielded to British troops planting themselves in the frontier, as well as were content with British “pirates”, hijacking and stealing cargo in the Caribbean, LOL.
They appeased the British because the Federalist wanted to.
“Hamilton policies produced debt.” That isn’t true, Hamilton came on the scene with the debt already there. He just decided it would be best for the nation if it stood by the obligation it already had undertaken rather than repudiate it and ruin our reputation. Honor was a watchword with Hamilton personally and as a nation.
Jefferson was wrong about almost everything he fought Hamilton over (which was why he lost all direct battles with H) and the Bank of England was one of those things. J hated Banks because they basically owned him and he refused to reduce his extravagant life style to get out of debt.
England did not lose its freedom to the Bank of England but quite the contrary, as H found out to his mortification, since it allowed the financing of the War against us then later against Napoleon. That revolutionary war experience provided the education H needed to recognize the value of a national bank in providing the means to security and to grow an economy.
There is a big difference in sending state militias against a bunch of drunks and fighting the British Army. There was no federal army available.
“They appeased the British because the Federalist wanted to.”
That is simply and totally false. There were frequent discussions of what to do about the problem and the requirements to oust them. It became obvious that it would require more than we had available to do so. Federalists wanted the posts turned over as much, if not more, than anyone. It was an embarrassment to all of them.
That was Madison role to conjure up (Good thing the French Rev. happened thus unleashing Napoleon). Did not the Constitution lay out a mechanism for defense? The Federalists were too scared of Britain that they signed one-sided treaties. Good God man, think of all those US sailors being gobbled up by the British, yet the Feds allowed that. Anyway, just another clean-up job by the Democrat-Republicans left by the Federalist.
I take it you love this strong central government with the $14,000,000,000,000 debt along with trillions more in “promises”.
If the Federalist were so “right” and true, why did they disintegrate so easily after 1800? Unfortunately their spirit still lives in the policies of democrats and moderate Republicans, implied powers included (Although Jefferson “purchase” became one). Thank God for the election of 1800, we were headed for a tyrannical mess if Adams won again.
Jeffersonians consistently sought to reduce the military. At one point J wanted to get rid of the Navy altogether and replace it with coastal sailing gunboats. He wanted to get rid of our merchant marine as well since trading vessels provoked war in his view.
Federalists had nothing to oppose the British with in the early 1790s. Not that many Americans were seized and many of those who were actually were British subjects in some cases Royal Navy deserters. Republicans had reduced the naval buildup that produced “Old Ironsides” by cutting the appropriation that was to fund it in half.
Far more ships were seized by the French in any case. Somehow the Republican (highly selective) outrage over seizures did not extent to the French depredations.
Americans showed that they were susceptible in 1800 to the Democrat lies and tricks and they have remained so ever since. That is a major reason why we have a huge government.
Our government under Washington and Adams (basically Hamilton’s policies until the last year of Adams) was fantastically successful and had put our nation on the road to success. But democracies are notoriously incapable of recognizing their best interests and ours is no different. They are readily stampeded into stupidity.
As I have stated Jefferson’s persecution of Burr was FAR more “tyrannical” that anything Adams would have ever considered. While it could not have happened to a better guy, the Burr Treason Trials were tyranny of the worst sort.
“That was Madison role to conjure up (Good thing the French Rev. happened thus unleashing Napoleon).”
No idea what this is intended to mean. Madison never “conjured” up an army. We won the War of 1812 despite the Republicans earlier efforts to destroy the Navy and because Jackson’s militia beat the Brits at New Orleans. Our army so so weak otherwise that it only took 5,000 from the British Army to burn our new capital. So much for the idea that we had the power to kick them out of the western forts twenty years earlier.
It is a misfortune [sic] incident to republican government, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.
I fail to see how the construct is faulty, and I cannot help but admire the efficient yet forceful expression of eloquent thought.
exactly...
Washington built an army to fight during the Revolution and it held together until the war was won. Adams, like Jefferson, had little or nothing to do with the military.
It isn’t convoluted at all. By the end of the War the Army had disappeared because it was not getting paid and the task was essentially done. Jefferson’s followers during the 1790s persistently insisted on refusing any but minimal funds for the army and navy. This was the period when there was only a tiny army of insufficient size and ability to throw the Brits out of the forts.
There was very little “fat” for Jefferson to cut when president so it was mainly the military which was cut. This was during a period of intense international danger so it was extremely imprudent and we paid the price later when we needed a military.
The government in 1800 was TINY and taxes minimal. Jefferson’s savings rapidly disappeared when the War of 1812 was declared, they probably cost us MORE than would have been the case had the military been properly funded. Do you think the British were blind to our refusal to build sufficient military strength to defend our interests? Or the French?
I acknowledged the British seizures of ships but the fact remains that there were few true Americans impressed. Life in the Royal Navy was a miserable existence for the seaman so desertion to higher-paying and less brutal conditions on American ships was common.
Don’t distort what I said, “most” of the American ships were neither commissioned or manned by British deserters. Nothing I said even implies that was the case.
But the real point is that because of the Jeffersonians refusal to build the military’s strength we could do nothing about the British seizures or the French. The best he could come up with was to destroy the economy by stopping foreign trade thereby plunging the nation into a deep Depression. This alone wiped out government revenues (almost totally dependent upon tariffs) and forced a round of deficit spending unlike any seen before.
When it came time to fight the Brits again, it became increasingly difficult to finance it because the Republicans refused to recharter the Bank of the United States showing once again how wrong Jefferson was about its necessity. Government finances got so bad that his followers and acolytes had to bite the bullet and recharter it.
Anyone taking Thomas Jefferson’s version of almost any economic or financial theory will lead to disaster. He knew only slightly more than Obama.
Of course, in the real world the establishment of the National Bank, thanks to the efforts of the real financial genius of that era, Alexander Hamilton, produced rapid growth in the American economy, an explosive growth which was only derailed by Jefferson’s embargo and the refusal to recharter the National Bank under Madison. The ensuing depression forced Congress to recharter the bank which again led a massive growth until derailed by Andrew Jackson producing the worst depression prior to the 30s.
Jefferson is rightly regarded as the founder of the Democrat party. He was as much a phony as any modern democrat and campaigned on lies and class warfare just as they do. Liberty to him was just a word to get votes as his personal life showed.
Jefferson is easily the most overrated president we ever had. His administration was a disaster which had two high points: the Lewis and Clark expedition and Louisiana. Louisiana was basically thrown into his lap. Napoleon, having lost an army in Haiti intended to invade Louisiana, figured it was better have the US fight Britain for it rather than France. Jefferson had not only authorized only to buy New Orleans but did not believe the constitution even allowed the purchase. His constitutional understanding was as weak as his economics and finance.
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