Fun fact: According to famed programmer Brian Kernigan: one day a colleague at Bell Labs was doing textual analysis on *The Federalist Papers* but it was proving challenging due to the full-text of the document being around 1mb—far more memory than most machines at the time.
Kernigan mentioned the dilemma To Ken Thompson—of Unix fame. The next day he came to work with a new program that could quickly find strings in a text document without having to load the entire document into memory. It became known as grep.
Possibly because I’m not from the US, but the first thing I think of when hearing of the Federalist Papers is Mosteller’s work on deciding the disputed authorship using Bayesian techniques rather than the constitutional significance.
Indeed, the “federalist papers” are well-known to Americans as the documents being discussed in this article. Most Americans will have studied them in history class in school, or at least heard of them.
Doing some heavy lifting with most there. The Federalist Papers were really only ever mentioned, and nothing close to being studied. That's very similar to saying most christians have studied of the book of Enoch. Some might have heard of the non canonized books, but studied them?
The Federalist Papers were a big chunk of reading materials for my introductory US History course in college. I think it was briefly covered in highschool too (AP classes), but probably no more than an issue or two.
I recognize that still, only barely "most" Americans even go to college, so probably only like a third ever really read any of it.
Most people don't take college-level American history courses, even among those that do go to college.
My AP history course was just basic American history with added reading and writing and a big project due near the end, taught using a college textbook. They weren't covered in much more detail, and definitely were not a big chunk of reading materials. Our extra reading included things like Malcolm X, The Grapes of Wrath, and... I can't remember the third. I think I that AP test was my best-scoring, but it has been 20 years so I might be wrong on that.
Most American schools do not teach the federalist papers, or civics at all.
I went to high school in New England, where we at least covered the basics like the Boston Tea Party, Revolutionary War, Constitution Convention, etc. However I only read the Federalist Papers after buying a copy as an adult.
You comment is just 12 words long, but speaks volumes as to the problems of these United States. Even AP US History (or its college equivalent) is a fucking joke for how little information it conveys. So we've got a tiny portion of the country walking around with even the most basic understanding of how we got here, with the majority of the population having even less understanding of history, politics, civics being spoon fed an endless stream of propaganda from any source with the ability to publish it, all completely untrained in how to synthesize and interpret.
IMO AP US History was really, really good, in terms of how much material it covered. I could scarcely imagine more material being taught in a year-long course for a high schooler. Granted, the material should be more common knowledge, but given that it isn't, mostly I was impressed.
I'm sure you can go deeper on that stuff but , like... we memorized every president and vice president, and what they ran on and what issues they faced, etc; it was _pretty_ comprehensive. To be fair my school taught AP US quite well, I think they had an 100% pass rate. But a high-schooler with no knowledge of the world, economics, labor, culture, science... and especially European history which moves in lockstep with American... can only understand so much. It would take a much more comprehensive (and, arguably, ideological) course to convey the history of the nation in much greater depth than that class did.
I got into reading history as an adult primarily because of how little I was taught in school (or at least, how little I remembered). History didn’t seem nearly as relevant when I was younger as it does now.
Reading about it now and realizing just how much people know that isn’t accurate or is misleading is shocking.
the unfortunate reality of America is that the constitution is taught for less than a semester, and then kids take a test on it, and then everyone forgets everything about it the semester after.
they have 0 understanding of any of the theory. and the resulting society we live in is people that don't understand how the rules work. If you don't understand how the rules work then you'll believe anybody who tells you that the game is rigged.
then you end up with idiots arguing with idiots while they all lie about reality.
Yeah, yeah, but if you don't do your due diligence on Supreme Court rulings pertaining to the constitution you don't know how the rules work. And since there isn't a consensus on the living document shit well, it's subject to interpretation - which is a real hazard. Ain't nobody got time for that.
> If you don't understand how the rules work then you'll believe anybody who tells you that the game is rigged.
When the game is rigged, the conclusion that it is rigged is correct. Regardless of what was the reasoning hundreds years ago. If you don't understand how the rules work then you'll believe that the game is fair when it is not.
Also, if understanding the rules requires more then a semester, then maybe the rules are overly convoluted. It is not like other countries would had everyone spending years on equivalent stuff.
> the unfortunate reality of America is that the constitution is taught for less than a semester
State standards vary, but IIRC in California it's the central focus of a full semester of civics in each 8th and 12th grades and an important subject within a full year program of American History in 5th and 11th grades; if one participates in ubdergraduate work (as most Americans do), you are likely to have more of it in your gen ed requirements, as well, though the particulars vary even more than state standards for K-12.
I do recall taking a constitution test in grade school and high school. I would definitely say that they weren't taught for a whole semester. The test was just something that needed to be checked off.
This is also kind of silly. You can be taught something as a kid, you can show them the legal rules, but if the adults around you don't act with respect for the system, why would you bother believing it?
I think it is no coincidence that most socio-economic and political protests are attended almost solely by high school and university students. People (kids, really) who have no clue what they're complaining about because they're in the process of learning the very subject matter they're complaining about, but also very easy to rile up for ulterior motives with the right triggers.
If you want to amass a large group of people to exploit for political gains, targeting people without fully developed impulse control (quite literally one of the last things we develop in our brains in our mid-20s) can be very effective. Fortunately this is also counter-balanced by the natural inclination towards political apathy in young people, so no matter how much time and money people put into “get out the vote” campaigns targeting young people, it almost never moves the needle in elections.
But of those 10%, a good half of them think of the Federalist Papers like it's a 2nd Bible, with irrational attributions associated with it, like they lost their minds.
Strictly speaking it’s not overly necessary. We already adopted the Constitution.
The purpose of the papers was to sell the Constitution to the people of the States to get their States to ratify it. Getting someone to read them will give them a fuller appreciation for a lot of the “why” behind the Constitution, but I would be happier if we could get more people to understand what it is.
But also a lot of the "why" is out of date and has changed in the last 200 years since the constitution was ratified. In that time it's been amended 27 times, the nation went through an extremely bloody civil war and we've seen massive changes in business and technology.
And frankly as a legal document the constitution is a pretty poor one. It's incredibly vague, it doesn't define any of the terms it uses and is incredibly hard to amend. It certainly has served us well in the past but many of our current political strife stems from its deficiencies.
I mean, it is amendable as you pointed out. The root cause of our political strife is probably something no constitution can do anything about because if it could, we could just pass any changes want to make as an amendment.
Well we haven’t amended it in a while, and the most recent one was approved by Congress at the same time as the Bill of Rights (was one of the articles of the Bill of Rights) and ratified by enough States in the 20th century mostly because a guy got a C on a term paper and was understandably pissed because his paper was correct. That’s because at the end of the day when all is said and done, we as a Union have not been convinced that we should amend it again yet, and replacing it would have similar hurdles.
EDIT: Also feel like I should point out the Constitution is clearer than people think it is. Largely disagreements in how to read this or that come down to wanting to read it one way, but not being able to without making in effect a philosophical argument rather than just reading the text. This is not uncommon in the law profession, which is why we have Courts, and Courts can overturn their own precedent and Congress/legislatures can tell them they're wrong by passing a new law.
My favorite example is the 16th amendment:
> The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
This was passed to "clarify" that Congress had this power already, according to Congress; and according to the Supreme Court at the time, they did not. I think the Fuller Court was just wrong on this one because here's what Article I Section 8 (titled "Powers of Congress" but all of Article I covers the legislative power) actually says as it pertains to raising government revenues:
> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Note how before the semicolon, they clearly distinguish between Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, but after the semi-colon they list exactly Duties, Imposts, and Excises which shall be uniform throughout the United States. We didn't need the 16th amendment for Congress to collect income tax, but a court thought they did, so they passed an amendment. Congress can do that kind of thing when they want to because they are the most powerful branch of government.
The problem with the income tax was actually Article 1, Section 9:
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
It explicitly bans direct taxes except for a fixed tax per person. A income tax which directly taxes individuals almost certainly constitutes a direct tax by any reasonable interpretation.
The 16th amendment directly repudiates that section and grants the explicit power to levy a income tax.
thirty percent of the high school class of this California coastal area are not able to read at grade level; about ten percent of the population are not fluent in English; a substantial number of the young adults die before the age of thirty; grandchildren by late thirties is not unusual.. who exactly is familiar with this subject?
One thing I got from reading the Federalist Papers is an understanding the the government we have is what the founders warned about and did their best to prevent/delay. Understanding the reasoning behind the words that are in the Constitution should be required. The Federalist papers show how much thought went into writing the Constitution.
Read the Anti-Federalist Papers too. Both sides were part of the public debate. The Federalists "won" but the criticisms from the Anti-Federalists are relevant.
the government we have is what the founders warned about and did their best to prevent/delay
It's interesting how much Americans venerate the founders. At the same time, I recall that no less a conservative jurist than Antonin Scalia thought that they made a mistake by making the constitution too hard to amend: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/how_scalia_and_ginsb... ("Scalia said fewer than 2 percent of the population could prevent enactment of a constitutional amendment. “It ought to be hard, but not that hard")
As an outsider, especially looking at how powerful the Supreme Court has become so both sides can read a seemingly inflexible document in a way that suits their purposes, did the founders foresee this?
I think they should be venerated just for actually having a philosophical debate as the basis of the government in the first place. It would be basically impossible to get perfect results, but that alone is absolutely amazing and seems almost impossible today. Imagine the leading politicians of today writing anything near the federalist papers, debating it, then compromising to adapt the conclusions, it's absolutely unimaginable.
well, you have to consider the context. they had just done a treason together and killed a bunch of people they all agreed they didn't like, so there was some established trust and respect
And to your point, it was useful to paint the revolution as being some high minded, noble affair, rather than realpolitik wherein they recognized an opportunity to seize power from a weakening crown that tried to overplay its hand.
History, as they say, it's written by the victors.
American Exceptionalism would hold that there's something unique about formation of the US that enabled these steps, but consider that Europe is filled with democracies with similar rights despite arriving there via different trajectories.
The fact that the US continued both persecution against indigenous Americans and chattel slavery of Africans for years beyond its European peers gives the lie to the high-mindedness of their cause, and it should give us plenty of reason to hold any of these early views suspect.
These are not minor errors, they are fundamental injustices, and anybody who could so readily ignore them is not an authority worth appealing to.
As a history lesson? Sure, one can read what the early US philosophers and politicians wrote and derive value from it. But it would be a mistake to put them on some kind of pedestal and assume that they were uniquely qualified to create a superior structure for their new republic.
I am a liberal, and you also sound liberal, I am critiquing you from the context of seeing you as a trench mate in our impending civil war. I hope you understand that appeals to "racism" aren't winning you many friends. It's an absolutist position that ignores significant nuance and context, and worse it alienates moderates.
Our founding fathers did better than those before them and deserve some credit for that.
You are using today's morals to judge yesterday's actions with little reference to context. Were you in their positions, I doubt you could have done better. Their foundation is what gave you the privilege of judgement your post betrays.
I would be surprised if you can give me a cogent history lesson, but I will listen to you tell me how European democracies were started. I think America and France shares significant philosophical heritage. I think you are denying the amount of time and effort it takes philosophy or culture to permeate an aristocracy. I am admittedly fairly ignorant in the area, I am open to listening.
You can talk about American persecution of indigenous Americans compared to Europe, but Nazi Germany saw what Americans did and wanted to push eastward into slavic land in the same way Americans pushed westward. Quite literally Hitler wanted to do what Americans did to native Americans to Slavs, literally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum. So that idea of enlightened "high minded" Europe falls quite a bit short, particularly in the context of WW2. Porgroms seem hard to reconcile too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom. This is contemporary and we can hear murmurs of it all over the white world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement. It Nazi Germany propaganda used to justify what they did.
It's like you think it's an easier explanation that people are born with perfect philosophical knowledge and make a choice to be evil rather than it being an easier explanation that implications of actions and philosophical cogency are learned rather than being apriori obvious. Convenient to persecute, but within it belies lack of self reflection on your own evils and how they came to happen.
Our founding fathers were some of the giants whose shoulders MLK stood on. Go read the "I have a dream" speech and consider that the civil rights movement is taught in positive light in American public education and reconcile that with your cynicism. I agree that it is not as simple because MLK was the "speak softly" part of "speak softly and carry a big stick."
Ideas have meaning. Some ideas prompt people to risk their lives and that personal risk in the face of greater power is what ultimate creates change.
I don't think that is unique to America, but I do think it is part of American culture.
Timothy Snyder (the modern person who most closely resembles our founding fathers, to me) would call your attitude the "politics of inevitability." Realpolitik is inevitable after all, why try to fight something that is inevitable. Why talk about values in the face of inevitability? https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-politics-of-inevitabilit...
I am not an American exceptionalist because I do not think America is intrinsically better. I think that many people have sacrificed to make America better and those sacrifices in the name of ideals have led to better outcomes for many people.
The Declaration of Independence very clearly states why they didn't like England. It also says the act of treason that started the nation wasn't something they wanted to do but felt was necessary.
The question of power in American government is an interesting one. Much of the work of the Constitution goes into restricting powers to limited domains or balancing powers against each other.
I think it is commonly held that the modern federal government as a whole is vastly more powerful than what it was envisioned to become by the Founders. While American States still enjoy a large degree of autonomy for their own affairs, through the delegation of so much Congressional power into the Executive and the clever use of the Enumerated Powers of Congress to legislate on matters not obviously under its purview, today's federal goverment is enormous and exercises a high degree of centralized control.
But what is the only force which can impede the accumulation of power by the federal goverment? A powerful Judiciary which can say "no" to unconstitutional overreach. It's almost necessary for the Supreme Court to be as powerful as it is to rein in the other two branches. This is a classic "conservative" Court move, to say no to the other two branches of the federal government.
The balance of power between the federal goverment and the States shifted dramatically 100 years in, with the ratification of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War. Because of a legacy of some States trying to retain the antebellum (racist) status quo, the 14th empowered the federal Constitution with the ability to demand that States respect the rights of citizens as endowed by the federal Constitution. Suddenly the Supreme Court gets way more powerful because now, on every rights-related matter where it could declare federal actions unconstitutional, it can now also declare State actions unconstitutional. Here lie many of the classic "liberal" court moves that say no to State governments.
The danger on either side is that the Court, being so powerful a force against either Congress and the Executive, or against the States, is that it then has to be trusted to exercise proper _self_ control, since it has, by the Founder's design, very little natural accountability.
Judicial review -- the ability of the judiciary to declare laws "unconstitutional" -- was not explicitly granted and in the first years there was debate whether this was a power of the courts.
Thomas Jefferson hated the concept, saying that the Constitution would become "as wax" in the hands of the judiciary.
Here's what I've failed to quite grasp: if judicial review wasn't a thing, then what power would SCOTUS have had? Would they have just served as the "jury" for each case, but without the ability to set legal precedent for future similar cases? And if so, doesn't that mean they could still take future cases and rule the same way... just with more repeated/wasted work?
The Supreme Court using precedent is totally different from judicial review. Not all, or even most, of their cases
today require judicial review. For example, the Supreme Court recently ruled on how to interpret a law on wetlands adjacent to the waterways.
Judicial review is limited to describing the Supreme Court throwing out a law as unconstitutional, as opposed to applying legal reasoning and precedent to understanding the law.
I didn't mean to say all their cases require judicial review. But I am asking about cases where the question really is "what is the effective law, given that the constitution says X but plaintiffs believe the statute says not-X?"
Like, if it turns out the statute really goes against the constitution, then what else can the court do if not declare it unconstitutional? Just read it for amusement, give their 2 cents, and shrug and tell congress it can do whatever it wanted anyway? What does the constitution even mean at that point?
> But then who prevents the courts from running roughshod over the Constitution without anyone to stop them?
Depending on how you look at it, the answer is either nothing, or impeachment.
But regardless, this doesn't seem like sound reasoning. The constitution itself becomes meaningless if congress can just override it through ordinary legislation without going through the amendment process. This is true regardless of whether or not anyone watches the watchers.
Moreover this doesn't even seem like it needs a logical leap; the constitution literally says:
> The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority [...]
That seems to be a very explicit mention that the Supreme Court can adjudicate all cases regarding the laws of the United States, and also determine the relief (if I understand "equity" correctly). That... seems to be exactly what judicial review is, no? Otherwise what would this "power" the constitution speaks of be?
The Veto was originally seen as the check on unconstitutional statues, and that it was improper for a president to use it to dismiss a statue they disagreed with politically.
Well, in the UK they have the principle of Parliamentary Supremacy. Like here in the US, courts there can set legal precedent, but unlike here, they can't rule a law that has been enacted by the Parliament as being unconstitutional.
> Well, in the UK they have the principle of Parliamentary Supremacy. Like here in the US, courts there can set legal precedent, but unlike here, they can't rule a law that has been enacted by the Parliament as being unconstitutional.
Yes, Parliamentary sovereignty—that the law is exactly and only what Parliament [0], directly or by delegation to other bodies, says it is—is the central, fundamental, element of the British Constitution (arguably, that is the whole of the British Constitution, insofar as by that you mean something functionally analogous to the US Constitution, that is, a fundamental law to which all other law is subordinate.) There is no Constitution as a distinct document setting out fundamental law with its own amendment process distinct from normal legislation in the UK.
You couldn't meaningfully have a law that transcends the normal acts and processes of the legislature without courts being able to set aside regular acts of the legislature as not-law for conflict with it, and you can’t reasonably read the power to resolve all cases and controversies arising under thr Constitution (which explicilty is the preeminent law and limits the power of Congress to make law) and laws of the United States as anything other than including the power to resolve disputes over whether an act of Congress is within the power assigned to Congress in the Constitution.
Note that the UK does have judicial review that extends to all acts of delegated power by government body, just not to primary legislation, which is not delegated but a direct act of the sovereign power. In the US, Congress’s legislative power is delegated by the people via the Constitution (popular sovereignty), rather than having Congressional sovereignty as the sole operative Constitutional principal. So, really, judicial review itself is not different between the two systems, only who is the sovereign from which all government power held by other bodies is delegated differs.
[0] in present terms; in historical terms, perhaps “the Crown”, embodied in the personal acts of monarchs prior to the establishment of the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty, and by the acts of the Crown-in-Parliament since, rather than merely “Parliament” would be more accurate.
> Well, in the UK they have the principle of Parliamentary Supremacy
In the US the Constitution is supreme, so it's not like the law is whatever ordinary legislation Congress passes, unlike in the UK. So someone needs to be the referee who declares when statues conflict with the constitution. If SCOTUS is not the one with that power, then who is it? Congress itself?
Note, along those lines, that, in the UK, also, the “Supreme Court” didn’t exist until 2009; prior to that, that function was served formally by the Crown-in-Parliament (the same body as the legislature), and functionally by (since 1876) the Apellate Committee of the House of Lords. So not only do the courts not exercise judicial review over Parliament, until recently the ultimate court was Parliament (nominally, and functionally a committee of the upper House.)
I'm also aware of that, but again, it doesn't really answer anything regarding the US. The constitution literally has an amendment process written into it. If Congress could just review its own statutes and say "yup that's constitutional" then they'd easily defeat the amendment process.
The US is a former English colony and much of our law is based on/has its origin in English common law. When the framers were writing the constitution they were trying to fix many of the perceived problems with the Westminster system
The UK does have an uncodified Constitution, though I don't know if their judges have ever invalidated a law passed by their Parliament because it conflicted with it.
Okay, so imagine plaintiffs claim the constitution says X and so that's the law even if the statute says not-X. Whereas defendants claim the statute says not-X but they believe it doesn't conflict with whatever the constitution says. SCOTUS being the arbiter studies both and finds that the constitution says X, the statute says not-X, the constitution is supreme, and therefore X is in fact the law.
Exactly how is that different from saying the statute is "unconstitutional"?
Imagine the claim is that the constitution says X, the statute says not-X, and the court rules ABCD and a pony.
How exactly do you prevent that sort of thing? What mechanism could do so?
If you can think of one, I'll note that it can likewise be applied to the scenario you described. If you can't, then I'll argue that the court's power is... Quite open-ended, with no limits on it.
> How exactly do you prevent that sort of thing? What mechanism could do so?
You don't prevent it, you deal with it after the fact. If Congress finds the court ruling egregious enough it obviously has mechanisms to deal with it. Like by impeaching justices, installing new ones, etc. And if for whatever reasons those aren't options, well, then there is no recourse.
Regardless, even if the court's power were unlimited, this is not answering my question or addressing my point regarding judicial review...
If people actually read the Federalist Papers then they’d have to stop referring to the US as a Democracy or a Constitutional Democracy and correctly refer to it as a Constitutional Republic.
The Federalist Papers outline exactly why the US Constitution established a Republic and why a Democracy was insufficient. However, rereading the Federalist Papers in light of the modern technology (instantaneous information & voting) I do believe their objections to Democracy would have been overcome they might have established a Democratic form of Government over a Republic.
The text of Federalist 10 shows that this is not a useful distinction in our contemporary context. Madison defines the "republican principle" as majority rule, and further defines "pure democracy" as direct government by an assembly of the citizen body, i.e. Ancient Athenian Democracy, something which does not exist at any scale in the contemporary world. A republic, as Madison defines it, is one in which the citizen body elects representatives, who then carry on the work of government. In modern parlance we call this a representative democracy. Further, Madison emphasizes the vital importance of majority rule in a republic as a guard against faction, so much so that he call majority rule the "republican principle" as noted above.
The bottomline is that the essential features of what Madison calls a "republic" is what the contemporary world calls a "democracy" or more specifically a "representative democracy". Insisting on calling American government a republic and not a democracy, when Madison's definition matches what we think of as a representative democracy, just obfuscates what's being discussed.
>Insisting on calling American government a republic and not a democracy, when Madison's definition matches what we think of as a representative democracy, just obfuscates what's being discussed.
I’m not insisting, the US Constitution is the law of the land and establishes a Republican form of Government. The author(s) and advocates of the Constitution were very clear in their intent and rationale for creating a Republic and not a Democracy.
Sure words evolve but calling the US a democracy removes all meaning of the word and form of government - its not clear why anyone would even use Democracy to describe the US besides erroneously thinking elected Representatives relates to Democracy because their is a vote of some kind. Contemporary usage or not unless the Constitution is changed I’ll defer to the law of the land which expressly establishes a Republican form of government.
We're a democratic republic. We have some democratic elements, including direct elections of senators, representatives, governors, etc. But we don't directly vote on laws at the federal level.
The first political party in the U.S. was founded by Jefferson and Madison, and it was known as the Democratic-Republican Party.
Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government… -The US Constitution
The irony is James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, remakes on people confusing Republics with Democracies and it is just as true in our time as his…
I remark here only that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy… - Federalist Paper No. 14
Please correct me if I’m wrong but the word democracy does not appear once in the US Constitution, which would be a pretty big omission for the document that establishes the US form of Government and otherwise consistent with the Founding Father’s advocating for a Republic and against a Democracy and never once using the term Representative Democracy throughout the Federalist Papers.
Isn't it a matter of words changing meaning over time? Could it be that what James Madison called "democracy" corresponds to "direct democracy" in modern understanding and "republic" corresponds to "representative (indirect) democracy" in modern parlance?
If not, then what are the differences between republic described by Madison and representative democracy?
There is a difference between words changing over time (example: awful historically meaning full of awe and the modern usage meaning very bad) and changing a form of Government of the US that is codified in the US Constitution.
>If not, then what are the differences between republic described by Madison and representative democracy?
To try to answer your question, if we used “Representative Democracy” then the US and UK would both have the same form of government, a Representative Democracy, which in my opinion highlights why proper use of the terms is necessary.
The US is a Constitution Republic and the UK is a Constitution Monarch, at least according to the legal documents that establish their respective Governments.
Whether a Constitutional Republic or Constitutional Monarch, neither is a Democracy. Sure both having elections and voting of at least some kind, but the UK is not a Republic despite having a House of Commons with elected Members of Parliament.
Let’s turn this question around…in your opinion what is the difference between a Republic and a Democracy? If any Republic that holds elections of representatives do you simply classify both the UK and US Representative Democracies?
>in your opinion what is the difference between a Republic and a Democracy?
To keep things simple:
democracy -> majority rule
republic -> majority rule + no inheritance of public offices (so no monarch)
Of course it can get more complicated than that - democracies can differ in terms of who can and cannot vote, freedom of press, how exactly the separation of powers is handled (or if the powers are separated at all), what method is used to distribute seats in the parliament, how much power is held by the president and how much is held by the prime minister etc.
By that definition US and UK are both (representative) democracies but of these two only the US is a republic and UK is a parliamentary ("constitutional" sounds pretty weird in this context given that there is no codified constitution) monarchy (while still being a democracy).
>To keep things simple: democracy -> majority rule
>By that definition US and UK are both (representative) democracies
I do not agree that majority rule is by itself the definition of democracy, but assuming arguendo for sake of keeping things simple, what in the US is majority rule? The US Constitution certainly doesn’t expressly establish majority rule, although it clearly establishes the US form of government is a Republic. The Constitution establishes 3 branches of Government. Executive, the President, is not elected by majority rule. Legislators, Representatives & Senators are not elected by majority rule. Judiciary, the Supreme Court Justices are not elected at all. Laws themselves are not majority rule rather a system of checks and balances of the 3 branches of Government guaranteed the Constitution.
>("constitutional" sounds pretty weird in this context given that there is no codified constitution) monarchy (while still being a democracy).
The UK does have a Constitution, it’s just not a single document like the US Constitution. It’s not exactly weird that the US Constitution isn’t the sole form of Constitution. In either case you being weird is immaterial to the UK being a Constitutional Monarchy.
I'm not so sure. To get a purer form of democracy to function well, you need the voters to be well informed on so many different specialized topics while also carrying out their day jobs. With a republic, we can elect people to take on the day job of being specialized and well informed on the affairs of governing.
And if we've learned any lessons from the last decade of information technology, its promise to leave us all better informed seems to have been a false promise---or at least a very mixed bag sort of promise.
I belice you referring to the famous quotation of Benjamin Franklin "A republic, if you can keep it".
The dichotomy in this quote is not republic or democracy but republic or monarchy.
"
The source of this quotation is a journal kept by James McHenry (1753-1816) while he was a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
"
The United States is a democracy, it is also a republic. Those are not contradictory/mutually exclusive terms. If you believe they are, please provide your preferred definitions and citations.
As far as my citation, Ill defer to the US Constitution:
Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government
The establishment of a Republican form of Government wasn’t an accident. The word Democracy doesn’t appear in the Constitution once, that also is not an accident.
I’d recommend reading the Federalist Papers and understand why the Founding Father’s were against a Democracy and advocated for a Republic. Federalist Paper No. 14 written by Madison might be particularly helpful as he highlights how people wrongly confound Democracies with Republics.
All republics are democracies. People who say that it isn’t are contrasting representative democracy with direct democracy but “democracy” encompasses both. Leaving out “direct” is deceptive.
This is very basic civics. Republics and democracies are distinct styles of Government. Was the Roman Republic a Democracy in your eyes?
Essentially what you are saying is anywhere there is a vote or election that government is a democracy, and anywhere there are representatives that government is a representative democracy.
These are legal terms that have very specific definitions.
Take the UK which elects a Prime Minister and Memeber of Parliment does that make it a Representative Democracy in your opinion? Despite electing a Prime Minister and Members of Parliament the UK is neither a Democracy nor a Republic, nor a Representative Democracy for that matter.
There are two definitions of republic. One is power rests with public and their representatives, not a monarchy. The other is basically US form of government with elected representatives and president instead of monarch.
Government elected by people is the definition of democracy. You haven't given an alternate definition. Are you one of the people that think democracy requires direct democracy? That is just one form of democracy, representative democracy is another.
Electing member of parliament is exactly what makes UK a representative democracy. They aren't a republic because they have a monarch. The UK literally invented the represen
The US according to its own Constitution is a Republic.
> Government elected by people is the definition of democracy.
No, democracy is a term that has been around for over 2 thousand years (same with Republic).
Hopefully as you know Democracy originated in Greece. Notwithstanding your definition, Greece the creator of Democracy, did not even elect representatives/politicians, politicians were selected at random from the citizens in a process known as sortition.
On account of your definition of Democracy I think I’ll gracefully bow out of this conversation.
You are not looking at a computer, because a computer is a person who computes. You are not typing on a keyboard, because keys open locks and why they be in a board.
Words change their meanings over time, the definition of democracy has expanded with the invention of representative democracy. Enough that Athens wouldn’t be considered direct democracy today because of limited franchise.
BTW, it is more accurate to call UK a parliamentary monarchy. “Constitutional monarchy” is synonym but confusing they don’t have written constitution. If democracy means direct democracy, what is the similarity in government between parliamentary and republic called? It is called representative democracy.
(I'm non-American. This is what I know. Tell me if I have anything wrong)
The U.S. was one of the first modern democracies but that was 247 years ago. Now the U.S. is one of the oldest modern democracies.
The U.S. constitution is supposed to kept updated with constitutional amendments. There used to be 1-2 amendments per decade, but the upgrade process has stopped.
Last completed ratification was 1992 (27th congressional salary) . All significant ratification's happened over 50 years ago (voting age, civil rights).
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Programmers would call this technical debt, unmaintained codebase.
The tyranny of the majority that Madison complained about was because he wanted to preserve the power of rich people from all the poors. The system they created now enshrines the tyranny of the the minority due to the concessions to slave and small states.
Motivated reasoning. In the 1790 US Census, the largest state, Virginia, was a slave state. 48.7 percent of the total free and enslaved population of the country in 1790 lived in slave states. What's more, out of the smallest 7 states by population, only one of them (Georgia) was a slave state.
The 2-person Senate and the 3/5ths compromise limited the power of SLAVE states to try to claim power in the Federal government by counting their slaves as population.
>The 2-person Senate and the 3/5ths compromise limited the power of SLAVE states to try to claim power in the Federal government by counting their slaves as population.
In 1789, there were 8 slave states and 5 free states. Giving each state 2 votes in the senate and counting their enslaved population at all was without question a political benefit to slave states.
> The 2-person Senate and the 3/5ths compromise limited the power of SLAVE states to try to claim power in the Federal government by counting their slaves as population.
Yeah, giving slave owners more power on behalf of them having slaves is totally limiting their power. The 3/5ths compromise is literally that - the more slaves your state have, the more the slave owners count.
The 3/5ths compromise and the Senate were to appease the slave states. I don't know where you're getting this somehow getting they were limited by this. The 3/5ths compromise gave them a sure representation in congress over a population they held as property.
> I don't know where you're getting this somehow getting they were limited by this.
I don't know where you're getting that this wasn't limiting them, given that their initial proposal was that each slave was to be counted as a person for the sake of apportioning representatives in the lower house. It's called a compromise because it's somewhere between the two different proposals from the two sides of this particular matter.
...And the non slave states wanted them to not be counted at all, because counting them at all would permit slave states to exploit them to gain political power in two branches of government without having to extend them any rights. The slave states still won, they just didn't get the whole hog in this instance.
> the government we have is what the founders warned about and did their best to prevent/delay.
Can you say more about that? They warned against faction but political parties developed pretty quickly and had the harmful effects Hamilton warned against.
They warned of tyranny of the majority, instability and violence from a too-powerful government (thus checks and balances), foreign influence in domestic affairs due to a weak government, and as you mentioned partisanship.
> instability and violence from a too-powerful government (thus checks and balances)
This is not the argument of the federalist papers. They argue for a government with powers commensurate to its objects. They discuss at great length the dangers of a government being too weak, namely that it forces a series of usurpations because its the only way to get anything done.
> They warned of tyranny of the majority
Nor is this the argument of the federalist papers, for much the same reasons above. Madison and Hamilton are quite explicit that majority rule is the only way to have a functional government, and that the alternative will only lead to dysfunction and the need to seize more power to break the resulting logjams.
"The inference to which we are brought is that the causes of faction cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principal, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote."
Madison goes on to discuss the difficulty of the situation in which faction encompasses the majority, which is likely what you're referring to. But he is VERY explicit that majority rule is one of the primary weapons against faction, and the discussion of the failures of articles of confederation and historical leagues and confederacies that occupies multiple papers makes clear that lack of majority rule is one of the great enablers of faction.
edit: The guard against majority faction does NOT come from minority rule or supermajority requirements. It comes from representation, rather than direct assembly, and a large population that is geographically and politically diverse. Those are the mitigations Madison proposes in Federalist 10 for the dangers of majority faction. He's quite clear that majority rule is the only way to run a popular government and any danger it poses must be mitigated by other means, namely representation and large geographic extent.
Remember the historical context here. When the constitution was proposed, the United States was operating under the articles of confederation. The articles created an incredibly weak central government that could not raise a standing army or even impose its own taxation (only request funding from the states). The Constitution represented a significant strength, anything of the central/federal government.
If anything, we currently have tyranny of the minority. Presidents routinely win the election while losing the popular vote, rural areas have political power dramatically out of proportion to their size, highly unpopular policies like abortion restrictions are routinely enacted, etc.
The GP may be referring to the federal government being stronger than the states, and therefore most of the power being in Washington DC rather than in the several state capitals. They also intended more power to reside in Congress and less rule by executive order.
Bingo. Congress has dangerously abdicated much of its authority to the Executive. And the federal government as a whole has more power than it was ever granted.
The concentration of power has happened slowly over time but nonetheless it has happened. Now we have a federal government that has legal authority to demand compliance on a range of issues that it doesn't have Constitutional authority to demand.
Hamilton (the author of most of the federalist papers) would most identify with todays left. As would Washington, and Adams. Jefferson was most identifiable with the right. I think the anti federalist papers were certainly interesting, but Jefferson’s construction of a party system in America with a strict constitutional interpretation, an emphasis on agrarian life, states rights, etc., vs Hamiltons loose constitutional interpretation, central government focus, emphasizing commerce, science, and industry, a no party system, and a firm belief in humanist liberalism is more explanatory of where we are today. Hamilton was so convinced the constitution assured freedom he did not support the bill of rights feeling it was self evident from the constitution. Interestingly it was Jefferson and Madison, sitting on the anti federalist side (not having written any of the responses afaik), pushed for the bill of rights and Hamilton initially resisted it.
It was an amazing time in history, with incredible foresight but much more importantly hindsight. I highly recommend reading the federalist papers and the responses (anti federalist), but also the modern biographies of the founding fathers. They were fascinating and flawed humans, but coming away from the exercise I was convinced they set the stage for the modern world to exist.
Madison wasn't an Anti-Federalist; he actually wrote some of the Federalist papers himself (along with much of the constitution and Bill of Rights). He did later become a Democratic-Republican, but by then 'Federalist' meant the political party, not the pro-constitution movement.
You’re right I miswrote that. He and Jefferson felt the need for the bill of rights, while Hamilton didn’t, and they worked together on that. Madison wrote something on order of 30 of the original papers, but wasn’t entirely aligned with Hamilton.
I'm not from the US and I am not a native English speaker.
The federalist papers are, in my opinion, a true work of art. I find the linguistic elegance and finesse of these texts highly admirable.
Unfortunately, to my dismay, the usage of such "complex" language is discouraged nowadays. Or to express it in the appropriate linguistic style: Our modern era seems to espouse a predilection for accessibility and brevity, often at the expense of the stylistic grandeur and intellectual richness that was once the hallmark of our written and spoken discourse.
Fun experiment to run: go through the Federalist Papers and find places where they make psychological observations/predictions about how people in government/politics do, should, or will act. Note that these observations/predictions typically underlie, or provide justification for the structure of the Constitution they are advocating for. Also note that these observations/predictions are completely wrong in the modern world.
Are they? Based on my observations of the modern world they seem to have been remakably accurate actually. Scarily accurate in fact. What observations/predictions did you note that are completely wrong?
Try looking at what they say about how the Senate will work. Or about how a president would respond to impeachment, and how impeachment would work as a check.
Weren't they describing a Senate that was appointed by state legislators? They weren't describing what a government with Direct Election of Senators would look like.
Or, if that's not what you're talking about, why not just quote a relevant portion of the FP instead of being so deliberately cryptic?
Ron Chernow's biography on him is really excellent. It's so good that I think it's actually a disservice to mention that it inspired the Broadway play.
Absolutely not a disservice. Chernow has to play 2nd fiddle, though that audience is leagues larger due to the influence of the generational gem that is the musical.
Everyone wins here, especially those who will _never_ read the Chernow bio, let alone finish it.
Chernow is his own generational talent, though in a niche most would never look askance at.
Lin-Manuel Miranda's nerdy-ass beach book inspiration has now opened a gateway for many more to discover Chernow and hopefully, rediscover the genius of the Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution. They wrote in the remedy to their original sin, acknowledged they were imperfect, and fought SAVAGELY to protect us from ourselves.
We've haven't yet lived up to the ideal, but we (U.S.) have also not yet let that idea die.
Isn't Chernow a bit too referential towards his subject?
Gore Vidal for example has much more cynical view of George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
I recommend Gore Vidal's "Burr", an account a lot of the early days of the US with Burr as the focal point.
"Burr (1973) portrays the eponymous anti-hero as a fascinating and honorable gentleman, and portrays his contemporary opponents as mortal men; thus, George Washington is an incompetent military officer, a general who lost most of his battles; Thomas Jefferson is a fey, especially dark and pedantic hypocrite who schemed and bribed witnesses in support of a false charge of treason against Burr, to whom he almost lost the presidency in the 1800 United States presidential election; and Alexander Hamilton is an over-ambitious opportunist whose rise in high politics was by General Washington's hand." -- from Wikipedia
I wouldn't recommend relying too heavily on an explicitly fictionalized novel for an accurate historical narrative, even if Vidal did attempt to ground it in fact (with some notable exceptions, such as the instigating factor behind the infamous duel).
I read Chernow's biography of Rockefeller, "Titan". It's an excellent biography. But it has one amusing flaw. In a chapter he'll present facts about Rockefeller, and then have a summation. The summation is the popular view of Rockefeller, while the facts in the rest of the chapter tend to contradict it.
If the summation of the popular view is at odds with the facts of the man, is that a flaw, or perhaps the natural contradiction of Rockefeller as a human being? The title is "Titan", but he dies just like all of us. I can't help but think of the ending of Barry Lyndon or The Seventh Seal
Since Chernow never explained this, I suspect he just couldn't break free of the conventional view.
For example, in the chapter on the anti-trust trial, Chernow concluded that Rockefeller had an unstoppable monopoly that needed the government to reign it in (the conventional view). Yet in the text he wrote that throughout the trial, Standard Oil's market share steadily declined and Rockefeller was unable to stem the retreat. There was no explanation of the discrepancy.
A different take on this is "Nothing Like It In The World" by Ambrose. It's about the building of the first continental railroad. Ambrose writes in it that he fully embraced the conventional view of it, but his research for the book turned everything on its head, and he came out of the experience with a very different view.
I do have copy of Chernow's tome on Hamilton, but haven't got around to reading it yet.
> Yet in the text he wrote that throughout the trial, Standard Oil's market share steadily declined and Rockefeller was unable to stem the retreat.
The general consensus seems to be that the antitrust trial against Microsoft had a significant impact on the company's behavior long before it concluded, forcing it to stop acting like a bull in a china shop.
I don't see the two views on Standard Oil as necessarily being contradictory, but I'll freely admit I'm completely ignorant of the situation.
From what I remember he did have an unstoppable monopoly. It helped that he could push around the railroads. But remember this is oil. When he was in charge Pennsylvania at one point was the oil capital of the world. That is obviously a position that is impossible to keep right?
He bought all of the domestic competitors. Which is why they broke up standard oil into different oil companies. Then they all floated on the stock exchange and made him monstrously richer. Or at least he tried to. The idea was once you discover a lot of oil, its harder to control.
but then what happened was international oil companies came around. Venezuela was very rich until they ruined it. RDS was immortalized by Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udZgIsIKU30
"The mirage" of a Supreme Court justice's legal talent? Come on. That's childish, whichever side of the aisle you're on. Might as well also talk about "the mirage" of Elena Kagan's legal talent.
Unless what matters isn't their legal talent, but whether they agree with your priors?
Notable that both Hamilton and Madison both later went against some principles espoused in the Fed Papers, Hamilton in his support for a national bank that overreached the constitution and Madison in his support for the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, which proposed states’ nullification of federal laws.
For Madison it was entirely a matter of political experience, so he later tried to row back on this quite a bit during the nullification crisis; specifically, he stated[0] that what VA had done was 'interpose' itself between the Federal Government and its citizens in concert with other states, and that it wasn't actually nullification at all. Whether this was what he actually thought, or instead just an attempt to justify his earlier support for the VA and KY resolutions, is for the historians to decide, I guess.
The Federalist Papers may be the most successful trolling operation of all time.
They were published anonymously, intended to provoke, and changed the world.
I find myself questioning the value of studying documents like the Federalist Papers. I'd certainly learn a lot, but I don't have any power to use what I learn to change how society operates; so what good is it? Knowledge that can't be utilized doesn't seem meaningfully different from a lack of knowledge.
If you universalize that then if nobody reads the papers or educates themselves on these topics then society will be worse off. You may not have sweeping powers but you do form part of a society that can enact change
"Putting the Federalist Papers on the Internet will eventually provide free access to all, but to have this great collection of arguments be slightly more accessible in the 21st century than it is today in public libraries will make no change in how many decide to read its difficult but worthwhile prose." –Alan Kay
For those interested in such things, ConSource has a wonderful collection[0] of historical materials relating to the U.S. Constitution, including contemporaneous state constitutions, notes from states' ratification debates, and records from the Constitutional Convention.
On the Federalist Papers, my current obsession is Federalist 36, on the taxing power: "Let it be recollected that the proportion of these [direct] taxes is not to be left to the discretion of the national legislature, but is to be determined by the numbers of each State..., a circumstance which effectually shuts the door to partiality or oppression."
The original publications were signed Publius and the authorship of each is only statistically inferred. So maybe the LOC should only say that Alexander Hamilton probably wrote Federalist 1.
The linked page says that the print edition of 1818 was the first to identify the authors by name, and it was "with revisions and corrections by Madison". Presumably he could tell them who wrote which essay.
Kernigan mentioned the dilemma To Ken Thompson—of Unix fame. The next day he came to work with a new program that could quickly find strings in a text document without having to load the entire document into memory. It became known as grep.