American Political Thought. Ken Kersch

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American Political Thought - Ken Kersch


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the creation of a strong, active national government both as a solution to the country’s current problems and as a foundation for the nation’s future glory as one of the world’s most powerful, eminent, and prosperous states – the equal, if not the better, of Great Britain or France. The young Hamilton, a financial genius, had penned brilliant pamphlets in support of the Revolution, and quickly came to the attention of the head of the revolutionary army, George Washington, with whom he became an aide-de-camp and an unusually close confidant. Hamilton spearheaded, and was the most prolific author of, The Federalist, a series of eighty-five essays published in the New York Independent Journal which his future rival, Thomas Jefferson, called “the best commentary on the principles of government which ever were written.” The Federalist essays struck “Hamiltonian” themes, such as a reiteration of the surpassing need for “energy” in government: that is, the idea that the national government should have power to act quickly, decisively, and effectively in carrying out its responsibilities. Hamilton insisted that, as the country’s travails under the Articles had made all too clear, the revolutionary era opposition between liberty and authority had to be rethought. The order and stability that a well-framed, energetic government could provide were not inherently a threat to liberty and justice but, ultimately, their guarantor. An appropriately empowered and effective national government, Hamilton argued, was worthy of the respect and esteem of all true republicans.

      Given these concerns, Hamilton was perhaps the leading proponent of broad understandings of executive power. The unity of the office of the President was not accidental. Presidents often had to act quickly, with a keen eye to ever-changing threats and important national objectives. Hamilton was also a fervent proponent of a powerful federal judiciary, possessed of all the power necessary to void laws in contravention of the Constitution – what we now call “judicial review.”6 He was especially concerned that the courts could guarantee the rights of property and contract essential to the development of a dynamic capitalist economy. The requirements of the Constitution are the nation’s fundamental law, ratified by “we the people,” acting, in a rare moment, in their sovereign capacity, he explained in Federalist #78. As such, its requirements are foundational, and superior to ordinary legislation, adopted as part of the day-to-day business of representative legislatures. It is in the nature of things that in the case of conflict, the fundamental trumped the ordinary: the solemn stipulation of the people themselves trumped the actions taken by their agents. It was the job of independent, life-tenured federal judges, exercising their apolitical, legal judgment, to impartially enforce these foundational constitutional requirements. This would conduce to a government that would exercise – to the fullest extent of its authority – only its constitutional powers, while guaranteeing fundamental constitutional rights.

      Albeit to a different degree with somewhat different preoccupations and concerns, James Madison was similarly alarmed by the national government’s fecklessness under the Articles of Confederation, and especially by the inflamed popular excesses of a state and local politics disturbingly heedless of rights.

      The latent causes of faction are … sown into the nature of man…. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation.

      Federalist #10 (Publius [James Madison]) (1787)

      Unlike some of his peers, Madison did not trust that a virtuous citizenry would cure the problem of faction and guarantee liberty. His proposed solution was instead to establish a geographically extended “republic.” (Here he used his own, novel definition of the term, which departed from ancient understandings that were synonymous with direct citizen rule in small, unitary polities.) This would encompass a multiplicity of contending factions that would mitigate the effects of each through opposition, filter popular passions by instituting representative (as opposed to direct) democracy, and divide power with an eye to the encouraging clashes between contending governmental power centers. This design instituted a system of checks and balances through the mechanisms of federalism (the “compound republic”), the separation of powers (legislative, executive, and judicial), and the multiplication of civil society’s opposing factions through the extension of the sphere made possible by a large country.

      Some contemporary scholars have argued that, rather than simply being naysayers, those who objected to the Constitution – the likes of Edmund Randolph, George Mason, Elbridge Gerry, and Patrick Henry, and pseudonymous authors like Cato, Brutus, and the Federal Farmer – were informed by a coherent, republican


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