The wisdom of The Federalist

I mentioned the other day in a comment someplace that I had read the Federalist. What I didn’t bother to say then is how much I like it, and how much wiser I think the American people would be if all Americans of voting age had read and paid attention to it.

Some parts of it don’t hold up, having fallen prey to technological advances that Hamilton and Jay and Madison could not have foreseen – for example, their confidence that the federal government would be much less likely to impose invasive depredations on the privacy and liberty of the people than would state governments, seems quaint in the light of the enormous expansion of the federal state in the twentieth century. Other parts of it hold up extremely well indeed, and shed light on new problems (human nature having remained invariable). For example, one can only suppose that those who framed the United Nations not only knew nothing of the fallacy of hypostasization, but also had either never read or never understood that great sentence from Federalist 15, “The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist.” For the United Nations has always had even less hope of success than did the United States as constituted under the Articles of Confederation, and for much the same reasons – or, that is to say, the United Nations would have had even less chance of success than did the Confederated U.S., if only it were possible to have even less chance of success than “absolutely none whatsoever.” For the French or Pakistanis to have signed onto the doomed project is perhaps understandable, as one would not necessarily have expected a Frenchman to have boned up on his Founding American Fathers. But for American diplomats to have pledged our country’s full support to an organization with all of the organizational defects of the pre-Constitution United States and none of its natural advantages, despite the remarkably clear-eyed, profoundly insightful and succinctly expressed analysis of Federalist 15 - 22, was surely one of the more fatuous pieces of folly to be found in the annals of an all too frequently foolish American diplomacy.

But my favorite passage in all the Federalist is also the one passage above all others I would wish modern-day political disputants to read, mark and inwardly digest. It is a passage from the very first number of the Federalist, and it has nothing to do with the specific issue of the ratification of the Constitution. Instead it has to do with the very nature of political discourse among a wise and noble people. I would say that I could hope that moderns such as – I suppose I should not name names, but I suspect the reader can supply them readily, from either side of the aisle – at any rate, that moderns of the type we all know all too well, would take this passage to heart, but there is little hope of that; in the America of Howard Stern and Jerry Springer, market forces will generally give commercial success to those whom only the most strenuous efforts of charity can restrain us from holding in contempt. Instead I offer this passage as a wistful tribute to a time when the voices that dominated political discourse in my beloved homeland were the voices of men who were greater than today’s noisemakers not only in mind, but in heart and charity as well. That the great political discussions of our time would be characterized on a national level by men and women capable of expressing Hamilton’s noble and great-hearted sentiments with a straight face, is too much to hope. But there is nothing I value more than finding a person who is in fact possessed of that fundamental wisdom and charity, so that at least in our own small corner of the world we can hope – whatever our prudential disagreements – to carry on a private conversation that reflects a decent sense of the essential equality in dignity of all persons, that evinces the essential humility that cannot help but be engendered by a vivid sense of the frailty that we ourselves have in common with the rest of our race, and that pays due honor to the memory and example of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay.

So here, with no further ado, is Alexander Hamilton from Federalist 1. I note only that all emphases are my own.

Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.

It is not, however, my design to dwell upon observations of this nature. I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or ambitious views. Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable--the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution....

...I affect not reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation when I have decided. I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity. I shall not, however, multiply professions on this head. My motives must remain in the depository of my own breast. My arguments will be open to all, and may be judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit which will not disgrace the cause of truth.

If only all the modern Deb Frisches and Michelle Malkins of the world had even the slightest inkling that those who are so fortunate as to be on the side of truth, can disgrace truth itself by the spirit in which they argue...but in modern-day America this is a thing, however ardently to be wished, not even wistfully to be hoped for.

P.S. My apologies for the unintentionally mannered style of this post; it is simply impossible for me to dwell fondly on the great political writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries without falling back into the rhetorical style of the period. Just consider yourselves fortunate that I had not recently been reading the works, and therefore channeling the incessant parallelism, of Gibbon...

P.P.S. To fans of Michelle Malkin who infer that I consider her as bad as the possibly-requiring-legal-restraint Deb Frisch, let me explicitly say that Malkin's perpetual bad temper toward liberals is much less severe than Frisch's all-but-insane rantings -- but then Malkin's bad temper has a much wider audience than does Frisch's.