Plsi 360g - Federalist Papers

Lody Faddoul

PLSI 360G

Essay #1

10/9/15

FEDERALIST PAPERS #10

In 1776, George Washington, the commander of the (de facto) United States army, could have never known that the real war would not be with the British, but with the members that would one day be called Americans. Almost twenty years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, the greatest fear of the founding fathers had come true and that was the failure of the government otherwise known as The Articles of Confederation. In an attempt to save the Union, the delegates again met and after much stress and compromise agreed on what is today, the Constitution. In an effort to sell this new government to the states, the Federalists, the dominant political party of the time, broke up and wrote papers to each state. In Federalist no. 10 written by James Madison to the state of New York, he asserts that, “Liberty is to factions, what air is to fire” (Dolbeare. Federalist No.10. 83), and through this assertion attempts to convince the state to sign on. Madison explains that a faction is a group of people that agree on something, and this could be anything from ten people that love beer to fifty people who hate the government. (Dolbeare. Federalist No.10. 83) The Federalist 10 paper, can be boiled down into three main points, these points include the idea that a large group of people can protect and stop corruption, while at the same time making it hard for a large group to unify and take action against the government, and finally that there can be no unified country without unity amongst the republic. 

        Madison’s first argument explains the reason that a faction can cause trouble, and describes how a large group of people can safeguard against the tyranny of the few. This idea is hard to conceptualize today because it is brutally wrong, but in the time of Madison, a group of many meant more than it does today. In today’s society, the entire world can be watching and still politicians can find a way to trick the little guys and hurt some factions. His idea stemmed around the facts that these large groups would each have different factions within them and this would ensure that the people were pushing the government to reach a compromise that would be best for all. This idea of a large as opposed to small meant that it would be harder for the government to fool them. Although it was a good idea at the time, it has not been able to withstand the test of time. Even now, factions can lead to political unrest and a problem with the country. Madison says, “…that our governments are too unstable that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” (Dolbeare. Federalist No.10. 83) One of the most prominent, huge factions in this country is the Republicans and according to Madison they should be able to ensure that the government, whether Republicans or Democrats run it, are being fair to the majority of the masses and not infringing on the rights of the people. In actuality, these large factions have become safeguards to the rich and powerful allowing them to cover their injustices through the power of numbers. 

        The power of numbers, according to Madison in his next point, also creates a safeguard to the union through the act of making it harder for the people to unify. In this portion of the paper, Madison describes the second most important reason factions are better with the union. His idea centered on the school of thought that a large group of people would make it harder for them to unify less than one cause, and make separation of civil war impossible. History would tell us that Madison was horribly wrong, for only sixteen presidents in and less than a hundred years, the union would divide into two factions. See his idea that a large group of people could never unify under one common interest seemed to be true and in today’s eyes it is true. In the America of today, the North and South have different options, the East and West cannot agree, and finally neighbors in a state argue over something as simple as tomato, fruit or vegetable. The world we live in today would abide by Madison’s idea of Larger equals harder, but that does not mean it is foal proof. 

        Lastly, Madison argues the idea that the factions needed to be pushed to the sides and realize that there could be no unified republic without a unified people. Although, factions would be inevitable to the states and people, Madison argues that if they could not agree on this one thing, than a republic there would not be. As Madison puts it “as long as the purpose of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed”(Dolbeare. Federalist Papers No.10. 83) Referring to liberty to factions as fire to air was easy for Madison because he knew that freedoms would open the country up to the culture of debate and change. The Federalist argues that the people of America needed to form under a large republic because only under this republic could ideas and change flow, thus allowing the factions to get lost inn the crowds and join opinions with the other people. He continued to argue that the factions alone could not break the union for the union was comprised of so many people that they alone could never agree.