This is, in essence, a substantial portion of what is asserted in The Federalist Papers, an 85-part series of letters and treatises written and distributed in 1788 by three proponents of adoption of the US Constitution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudonyms_used_in_the...

“Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good will and kind conduct more speedily changed.”
― John Jay, The Federalist Papers

That's good because if you read the Federalist Papers, you will see the founders explicitly set out to design a Republic at the federal level. Each state, however is a democracy, but people seem to ignore state-level politics for some reason.

I recently purchased the Federalist Papers so I could have a better understanding of "how" to read it, what the context was, and what types of discussions to anticipate having with those who'd like to look at it differently

TL;DR You're wrong.

And if that were to happen (Clinton victory w/ Trump popular vote win), trump would say the election was rigged and fuel fires to an uprising.

How wonderful it would be to have the luxury to discuss and debate them, along side Marx and others. Pick them apart, mix them together, stir, think, think, think.

They ruled states have the freedom to design their own voting districts. State sovereignty has always been a thing in the US.

I would encourage you to read the historical documents of the country where many of these constitutional arguments were had: The Federalist Papers

As a US citizen, this is truly offensive. It's as if you have no understanding of the government structure and history of The United States of America. We have 50 sovereign states, and this independence has allowed the state of New York to ban fracking and the state of Colorado to legalize cannabis. Not to mention that you just laid out what I would refer to as a police state.

I believe you should read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, and think more carefully about what you proposed.

Really, a blank slate and a promise to help them with whatever they want to learn.

No. 47, if you'd like to read it.

Madison discusses the issue in The Federalist Papers No. 10 [1].

[1] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp

I understand your clarification, I was nitpicking that you were saying my response to the original comment was 'crazy' or something, but without the context you gave in your reply I think my original response was appropriate.

I agree with your larger point, there is probably a workable solution that balances the threat of government with the benefits of government, but I disagree that it is 'not getting things done' that is the cause of us not finding that compromise.

In general, I think that appeals to 'a lack of will' are almost always incorrect. People, even politicians, are generally good and want to find good solutions. There is a lot of disagreement on what is a good solution, and even more disagreement on what the long term consequences of choices are. This is why there is gridlock, and if you read the Federalist Papers (in the case of the US), you will see that this gridlock is a Feature of the system, not a Bug.

But I guess if you're interested in virtue signaling, checking boxes and waxing poetic about what could have been...rather than looking at actual quality of life stats for Americans...I guess the U.S. might look like a lost cause.

Oh and if you want to understand the electoral college, read The Federalist Papers [5]. It's far more resilient to corruption than a nationwide popular vote.

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/01/news/economy/black-unemploy...
[2] https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/410081-kudlow-says-latest-...
[3] https://www.bea.gov/news/glance
[4] https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/281936-oba...
[5] http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1786-1800/the-federalist...

But there is no "supposed to be taught" -- anyone who knows American history knows that, for federal reasons, educational curricula are set at state or even local levels. Your school district appears to be highly unusual... and I'm pretty amazed at the concept of teaching this in middle school. May I ask where you went, out of both curiosity and envy? ;)

The relevant Wikipedia article even states:

> ...the essays they wrote have largely fallen into obscurity. Unlike, for example, The Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison, none of their works are mainstays in college curricula or court rulings. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers

My short review of the book would read;

"It is not just an excellent display of political knowledge, nor just an astute vision of governance, but mostly an acknowledgement and exposé on human nature. "

I am from Australia and wish we taught it in schools also.

I didn't know there were Anti-Federalist Papers so time to buy some more wine and get going.

Note: Ben Shapiro does a nice video on what the Federalist Papers are about.

====

It was one of the harder reads I've done such that it almost feels like a life accomplishment.

I'd personally recommend just googling the top 5-10, choosing some that you like and just listening to the audio book versions e.g. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PiSeeJQkrQ

I always prefer reading myself but in this case my comprehension was slightly better just listening to some of the essays.

====

“It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.”
- Hamilton

These Anti-Federalist Papers seem a bit more accessible, but part of my interest is in understanding the motivation of the writing of the constitution, and it seems there is no better source for that than the Federalist Papers.

If you read the Federalist Papers, it's interesting to note how much of history (going back to the ancients, ie Sparta, Athens, etc) the writers of the US constitution studied. That's not to say that they were perfect (I try not to hero worship myself; it often leads either to disappointment or distortions), but it's also nice to see the whole "learn from history" aphorism put into practice.

I just realized, I have never read them outside of the heavily abbreviated versions covered in US history class. I am reading them now, here's a link to them at the Library of Congress for anyone else who would like to read them as well [0]. I have to add, this is my first experience with a government website that is not like nails on a chalkboard to use. It's simple, efficient, and doesn't require enabling _any_ JS.

> How wonderful it would be to have the luxury to discuss and debate them, along side Marx and others. Pick them apart, mix them together, stir, think, think, think.

I don't have much to say on this, except that I needed to comment agreement on how amazing this would be. I believe in an afterlife, and I hope to get this chance.

[0] https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text

Edit: fix link to be to entire set, not just 1-10. Also, complement LOC website.

It is an amazing read, but the things that stand out to me are these.

1. Have diffuse/decentralized power centers to make it harder for special interest groups to gain power and control things. The last two centuries have had a tendency to move power from states to federal government; and from Congress to the President. So the balance of power has centralized.

2. Avoid a direct democracy because they tend to get subjected to demagogues. The direct election of senators was a major turning point in helping centralize power; since states became more and more irrelevant.

I am always impressed by how much Madison understood the nuances of political power and tyranny.

[1] https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary...

The first order of business in designing a democracy is figuring out how to mitigate the tyranny of the majority. Read the Federalist Papers. I wrote this a couple days ago: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4658896

To answer your question, the answer is "Everyone." The problem is that while this is technically true already (that's what consent of the governed is), the purpose of democracy is to make it explicit and transparent so that it can be criticized and reacted to.

This is untrue, and the Supreme Court has ruled several times on it. The states, which mostly modeled their Constitutions on the Federal ones, have a significant majority of them giving the people explicit individual right to bear arms.

Or read the Federalist Papers, or look at common law leading up to the constitution, or realize that the Bill of Rights was added at the states request to protect individual rights, not collective govt sanctioned rights.

I appreciate the design of America that incorporates democratically electing one's representives in the House of Representives while balancing the downsides of such a process against other forms of voting.

It's necessary to capture the passions of the body politic at large - which democratic voting does! - but it's also necessary to introduce mechanisms that can serve as a counterweight to the madness of crowds that have been frequently observed in history in America and other countries.

If you haven't done so, do read The Federalist Papers.

What I'm worried about is the anti-American, anti-democratic bullshit that is starting to pour out of Silicon Valley.

I think there is plenty of room within the existing framework to deal with the issues that we're facing. It may take a lot of work and may have to involve some serious restructuring of things like the House of Representative and the Senate, but I feel like it is worth it. What IS important is that we decide to do it together, with a plurality of voices, and not by building some sort of fucking space ship to hide away in like where everyone in SV seems to be heading.

The people who set up this system of government were true supporters of the Enlightenment. They were willing to compromise and willing to admit that "freedom ain't free", to put it in a common parlance. They had love in their hearts and the proof is that they were willing to listen and willing to compromise.

I don't see a lot of that these days. I see a lot of hate, misunderstanding, and self-absorbtion.

James Madison, The Federalist Papers

[0] A set of historical papers of great political importance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers

It's amazing how much more I learned from those essays than from years of formal classes on the topic of government though. Just getting the author's perspective from them directly, and realizing that they absolutely were thinking deeply about the impact, source, and validity of their arguments brings me so much closer to understanding the way things were designed than textbooks which reduce complex philosophical arguments down to their trivial outcomes like "So-and-So opposed a centralized bank".

Things like "private parties", property rights, I'd say that even the idea of "government", come after that fear has been dealt with.

During the "Secret Debates of the Federal Convention" (where the windows were shut in the summer heat so those outside couldn't hear what was said), the Father of the Constitution, Madison, discussed the conflicting interests between "the day laborer" and "the man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage":

"In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. [...] Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/yates.asp)

More useful to read than the Federalist Papers, which are propaganda. (BTW, it may help to know that the senate originally wasn't open to popular election. That battle was finally won in 1913, with the 17th amendment.)

Note that they spent many years analyzing the failure modes of previous republics, and attempting to design a system resistant to those failure modes.

I mean, we're still on our first republic (at least at the moment), while France is on its fifth, so obviously they did something right.

I think it also varies from country to country as it varies quite a bit.

This is ridiculous. Not every matter of conversation - especially one so enormous as "what is the nature of law?" can be answered in an HN thread.

There's nothing wrong with reading a few thousand words of a crucial essay to educate yourself. That's what you need to do to be able to think clearly about big topics.

Reading the law will only just get you started. It makes sense to read The Federalist Papers, The Communist Manifesto, The Republic, and many other cornerstones of thinking about this instead of demanding that someone distill thousands of years of thought into a HN comment.

> My point is fact, and stands:

It isn't and doesn't. I asked you a simple question in my last comment that you haven't answered that, for your purposes, may well "make my point": What about a situation in which two different entities both claim to be the legitimate government? Or a society in which large numbers of people regard a government as illegitimate? Or who regard particular laws as beyond a purview which they recognize for government?

What then is "the law?" How many different places to you need to look to find this one law?

http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty...

The authors of the Federalist Papers were against a specific enumeration of individual rights because they feared that those rights would become the only ones we had. They were prescient in some ways, but I doubt any of them foresaw the entire Constitution being suspended.

Sometimes the electorate requires protection from itself; the idea is not new (below History Stack Exchange answer references James Madison).

"It is arguably the most famous of The Federalist Papers [1]. Madison argues that society is undone by faction"

defined as

"a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.…"

"A faction can be a minority, but also a majority, and the majority can work against the good of the whole by abusing its power. The majority simply cannot be trusted not to oppress the minority, given the opportunity."

Emphasis mine.

The "Tyranny Of The Majority" [2] also comes to mind.

"American founding father Alexander Hamilton writing to Jefferson from the Constitutional Convention argued the same fears regarding the use of pure direct democracy by the majority to elect a demagogue who, rather than work for the benefit of all citizens, set out to either harm those in the minority or work only for those of the upper echelon. The Electoral College mechanism present in the indirect United States presidential election system, and the phenomenon of faithless electors allowed for within it, was, in part, deliberately created as a safety measure not only to prevent such a scenario, but also to prevent the use of democracy to overthrow democracy for an authoritarian, dictatorial or other system of oppressive government.[3] As articulated by Hamilton, one reason the Electoral College was created was so "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."

Some failure scenarios are clearly hard to prepare for.

http://history.stackexchange.com/a/5568

[1] http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_appointment#Legitimacy_...

Not just the Constitution, either. Other contemporary writings - the Federalist Papers, etc. - are often quote-mined to determine "intent". As you identify, these offer a lot of opportunities to pick and choose stuff in favor of whatever ideological decision you'd like to make.

People are stupid, and generally don't know what is best for them, and the more of them you get together, the more likely they'll develop mass insanity. You need some kind of buffer to moderate the fickle will of the public.

Snark aside, there are entire great works of Western thought on the question of whether men are capable of governing themselves. It is literally the the opening question of "The Federalist Papers," for Christ's sake. A breezy survey of a smattering of social science is bringing a knife to an intellectual gun fight, and comes up well short of making a meaningful contribution.

While this principle is far degraded these days, election of state officials is still fully reserved to the states. Many states have decided that judges are best chosen through election, and their constituents permit such action through the democratic process.

In the Federal system, judges are appointed by the executive. Following the same reasoning as you, Hamilton noted in the Federalist Papers, a series of editorials published anonymously which outlined the reasoning that shaped the constitution, that the executive appointing judges was the best method, because the executive lacks the power of both the "purse and the sword."

Only when states act so egriously as to breach the United States Constition, rather than state law, does the Federal government step in. Our most serious problem is that we generally cannot sue law enforcement officers, prosecutors or judges due to sovereign immunity, which provides almost absolute protection from civil suit.

I believe we inherited "sovereign immunity" from a rather incorrigible previous government. They believed that some sort of divine mandate somehow exempted their highest government official from the law, a particularly absurd idea which has had rather unfortunate consequences for several billion people.

Go read the Federalist Papers, there is no way the founders intended it to work that way and courts have never interpreted it that way either. James Madison explains it beter than I can:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

That would not be proper English nor make any sense linguistically.

If you believe that the Founders thought the States were not independent, and sovereign in their own right then you clearly have not read the Federalist Papers. Take a close look at Federalist 17 as an example

If the States were not separate but equal, i.e the foundational principle of our style of governance, then why call the nation the United *States*, why not just call it America or some other name all together

No the founders clearly believed the States should not be servant to the Federal Government, nor should the Federal Government be servant to individual state governments.

>>Second, the issue was conclusively settled at Appomattox and with the ensuing enactments of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

I disagree that it was conclusively settled, nor do I agree that application of the federal constitution to the states by default makes the states Subservient vassals of the federal government

Further last I check the passage of an Amendment requires the ratification of said amendment by 3/4 of States thus proving they are in fact not vassals as if they were then their consent would not be needed.

>In the modern era that might still be viable if the Senate's power were only to veto enactments by the House, perhaps by a supermajority vote

Yea... no

That does not make any sense historically, legislatively or logically. Having a chamber that can only act in the negative would be a pointless chamber of government.

Bills should be assumed to be Bad and at every level require affirmation.

Your process of legislative review makes about as much sense as a criminal system on the principle of Guilty until Proven innocent.

Laws should be hard to pass, laws should be extremely hard to pass, and federal laws should be almost impossible to pass ensuring the federal government does very little and most governance is done at the local level where it should be done.

In general the government that governs the least, governs the best, and this is quadruple true for a Federal Government

The upside is that if you get used to reading texts from this era, other writers of the time period become more accessible as well. For example, I recently read many of the sermons of Jon Wesley and found them to be an easier read than I was expecting, perhaps due to my exposure to the federalist papers and others.

"
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.[35]
"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Coll...

"Historians such as Charles A. Beard argue that No. 10 shows an explicit rejection by the Founding Fathers of the principles of direct democracy and factionalism, and argue that Madison suggests that a representative republic is more effective against partisanship and factionalism."

"Hamilton there addressed the destructive role of a faction in breaking apart the republic. The question Madison answers, then, is how to eliminate the negative effects of faction. Madison defines a faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".[14] He identifies the most serious source of faction to be the diversity of opinion in political life which leads to dispute over fundamental issues..."

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10

As for the "anti-democratic" American system of government, a cursory reading of the Federalist Papers would demonstrate that the Framers believed that majoritarian democracy was, in fact, tyranny of the majority. They were fundamentally correct - progressives love to praise Canada, but the office of the Prime Minister is, in only a slightly a hyperbolic sense, a 4-year elected autocracy with minimal checks and balances. Majoritarian rule stinks if you happen to fall into a minority, and that's the entire point of having a constitutional republic.

The beauty of America is that if you don't like your system of government, you can always move to another state. Trying to force your progressive values onto everyone via some sort of bizarre doctrine of cultural dilution is unbelievably wrong-headed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_S...

[2] http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/21/the-advantage-of-being...

This is not at all the same as what the framers had in mind with the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances” in the First Amendment. Big-moneyed special interest and influence was specifically something that James Madison was concerned about. I recommend reading "The Federalist Papers."

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000059...

[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobby.php?id=d000000088

[3] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082

From the Oxford English Dictionary, and bracketed in the time of the writing of the 2nd amendment:

    1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations."

    1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world."

    1812: "The equation of time ... is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."

    1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor."

    1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding."

    1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city."

Read the Federalist Papers (specifically #46), in which Hamilton, Madison, etc, give significant insight into the intent behind the Amendments. It is plain that they intended the 2nd Amendment to not restrict the people's ability to own firearms in any way, shape, or form.

Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol 1-3, by Werner Jaeger

Diary by Witold Gombrowicz

Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Sedgewick

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk

Tomie: No Use Escaping by Junji Ito

L’homme aux cercles by Fred Vargas

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.

The Weird by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

The Federalist Papers, ed. by Kesler

The Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. by Ketcham

Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, new translation by John Woods

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman

Loren Eiseley in the Library of America Edition

Tu rostro mañana by Javier Marías

The Complete Essays by Michel De Montaigne, translation by Screech

Earning The Rockies by Kaplan

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert

Nature Stories by Jules Renard

Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas

Olinger Stories by John Updike

Greek Science in Antiquity by Marshall Clagett

At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell

100 Diagrams That Changed The World by Scott Christianson

Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson

Alec "The Years Have Pants" by Eddie Campbell

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

And the Federalist Papers are a rather dry rehash of the Divine Right of Kings, dressed up in the language of protecting individual rights in order to dupe a newly freed people into accepting a new, better-disguised oligarchy. In my opinion, the philosophy of the U.S. Constitution is much better discussed in Spooner's "No Treason".

As for "Failed State", see every government in the history of mankind. Further note the parent's blatant misunderstanding of anarchy by labeling it a state. Anarchy is alive and well today, and always will be so long as free people organize themselves.

For the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, it might just be easier (to start) by just reading them directly. I have a small (12.5cm x 9cm) book that contains both documents and is only 58 pages long at that size. Read them in that order as the Declaration lays out the moral statement for why a break from the British Empire was seen as necessary by the (then) British colonists and the Constitution was the legal reflection of those ideas... reading the Federalist Papers is great for getting in the mind of the Constitution's authors and supporters.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Just a few weeks ago I watch a lecture that talked about Magna Carta and include discussion on its influence on the U.S. revolutionaries that founded the country. Just that one aspect was something that I didn't really see in many of the histories I've seen.

Anonymous publication must remain a viable avenue in the digital future if we are to maintain our character as a free nation. There can be no two ways about it.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Independent_Journal

But when I see the rabid way people are defending the guy like he wrote the Federalist Papers, who at best is guilty of being unaware that what he was saying is controversial, I don't feel outraged if he got fired in a massive company known for its liberal views. What did he expect?

He's not helping it by making himself a darling of the right wing media. That and lowball jabs at political correctness and Marxism make it a little too obvious where his sympathies lie and if he really wanted an objective debate picking sides doesn't help.

Mobilizing the populace and involving our elected representatives is the very purpose of democracy. It is a moral and public good, not an obstacle. You may argue that money has too much influence, but that is a separate debate. This is to say nothing of the fact that lobbyists, such as the MPAA/RIAA, dominate the treaty negotiation process, which is why the TPP is loaded with copyright provisions.

If you actually go back and read the Federalist Papers, or any scholarship on why treaties are negotiated in secret, it is precisely because they are intended to have minimal effect on domestic law.

Instead, they have become a way for the upper houses of legislatures and the executive to bypass the normal democratic process, ignore the populace, and change domestic law. This deceit is deplorable.

> the intellectual elite who were the thought leaders shaping our model of government were largely members of the Enlightenment faction that started the whole idea of anti-religious secular liberalism.

Really going to need a citation on this. Besides that point, the Enlightenment being anti-religious is a myth in of itself as well. Most standard taught US history on the events that took place basically from the split of the One Catholic Church, through the dark ages, and up to just before the founding of this country is woefully inaccurate. We are pretty good at documenting things that occurred on this continent roughly mid 1700s on.

Well, it's also not the point to entrench minoritarian rule, either. With the structural advantages granted to less populous states in the Senate and presidential elections plus ruthless gerrymandering of House seats, that's entirely possible and arguably worse. Most actual tyrannies have been of minorities.

It's also not like the framers had everything figured out. Their electoral college system went haywire almost immediately, for instance. If their system becomes so dysfunctional and looses legitimacy in the eyes of the majority (which it may be on track to doing), it won't last, to the detriment of us all. IMHO, that will mean some way of eliminating partisan gerrymandering and and replacing the electoral college with a presidential popular vote (since nearly everyone views the former as a proxy for the latter, anyway).

I'm talking about the basis of the US Constitution, its "spirit", so to speak. My reading of the Federalist Papers is that one of the main reasons-to-be of the Constitution was to avoid tyranny, the men that wrote that thing down put things like respecting private property or even what form of government to use after that. I admit, maybe I'm wrong on that interpretation (I've read them about three years ago), but I've recently started reading a selection of Anti-federalist Papers and I stand by my opinion.

> FB's and Twitter's constitutional rights

Again, there was nothing in the Federalist Papers (nor in the Constitution) about respecting the rights of private, abstract, soulless entities. Yes, I know about the relatively recent decision that gave those corporations a "political soul" (so to speak), but that decision had nothing to do with the original spirit of the basic law on which the USA was founded.

Largely, it was a slight modification to the British system that they were already familiar with.

Quoted for truth. Reading the Federalist papers is one of the most enlightening things any resident of the United States can do to understand why America operates the way it operates.

I'm reading Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist right now to get a twenty-first century take on some of the same issues. It's plain enough that human beings in general have very limited rationality, but that doesn't make it plain that human beings should be generally constrained in their freedom by an elite few.

Iceland is a pretty unique case: everyone there is pretty much everyone else’s cousin, and they’re on an island. They look the same, have roughly the same beliefs, etc. etc. And I’m still far from convinced that medieval Iceland was really so utopic.

I'm thinking of Sparta though, which was by many accounts pretty culturally uniform and egalitarian/meritocratic, at least for citizens.

* * *

I think the best analysis I know is still Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I also recommend The Federalist Papers, particularly Nos. 10 and 51, for a pragmatic solution to these kinds of problems, based on the decades of first-hand experience some smart blokes like Madison and Jefferson had trying to run fledgling democratic states. (And Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is probably worth a read too.)

For a more literary exploration, read some Balzac novels: early 19th century France was the beginning of the cross-over from aristocracy to bourgeoisie, and rapidly growing cities quickly accumulated bureaucracies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._39

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._45

Am Romanian, reading how the author was robbed on the bus because he had the invalid impression that because it was a Danish bus there would be no thieves in it almost made me start out laughing. One of the first reflexes I developed when I moved to Bucharest as a freshman student almost 20 years ago was to always check my back-pocket for my wallet (and later my front-left pocket for the phone). I still do that gesture up to the present day. I could also tell you how about 10-12 years ago a woman tried to convince me, my ex-wife and my ex-MIL that her son was badly injured in a Bucharest hospital, about to die, and that she needed some money in that very moment, she was crying out in the middle of the street just in front of us. My ex-wife would have given said lady money, but something seemed suspicious to both me and to my ex-MIL and we didn't. We returned to the same area about 15-20 minutes later and said women was still in the same place, this time not crying, calm, waiting for another "victim" to pick.

Not trusting people by default is not bad, it's an evolutionary trait that has helped us as a social species over the millennia. I'm just reading a wonderful book that it's based on not trusting people and which, nevertheless, has had an immense positive influence, I'm talking about the collection of articles called "The Federalist Papers" by Madison, Hamilton and Jay.

> As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” [0]

Firstly, that has nothing to do with a "blend", and secondly that purpose was far from served. I rest my case.

[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-elector...

You might try reading the Federalist Papers before making claims about the founding fathers. Again, it is not surveillance by government anyhow.

The existence of a massive political propaganda effort to sell the document to the enfranchised class of a particular state (broader than the elite political class but narrower than regular people) does not prove (indeed, if anything argues against the conclusion) that the document itself was intended to be understandable too and responsive to the interests of even the enfranchised class, much less regular people.

Edited: Its also I think worth pointing out when someone who is held up a paragon of democracy, like Washington is, held views that were quite anti-democratic. If this persons vision of democracy was limited, should we not note this? Regardless (within reason) of the time? There were people publicly writing at the time of the American revolution that believed in an end to slavery, the right of woman and non-property holders to vote, etc. There was a reason that The Federalist Papers were written, it was assumed that the arguments for the adoption of the constitution and the government it would create were liable to lose out for a variety of reasons. We tend to collapse the range of debate that was happening at that time.

The Virginians, that aristocratic lot, would have and did prefer features like the Senate, which would have provided a counterweight to the more radical House. It's that way even today.

I can't speak further to the historical context, but everything I've read about federation/modern/consensus democracies suggest that bicameralism is a benefit (ex http://wikisum.com/w/Lijphart:_Patterns_of_democracy).

Again, that's not saying that's what they were considering then, but also read some of the Federalist Papers (Madison in particular) and how much they were weighing factions/balance of power into some of these solutions.

Or try the Federalist Papers, or anything written by the U.S. founding fathers. Same style. Even better, try Fielding's "Tom Jones." Prose as masterly as Gibbon's, but you'll laugh yourself silly at the ribald and bawdy humor, not equaled again until the 20th century. Gotta love the English Enlightenment.

What is less clear is: to what extent is Facebook the press? The press, in 1789, could not send you push notifications. It was not gamified with the intent of increasing user engagement. It was not interwoven with a person's private communications with their friends. It did not encourage users to build "profile pages" on which they hang their reputations and opinions. Someone might have seen you reading The Federalist Papers, but everything else was up to you.

Any of these provides a legal avenue to regulate Facebook without cheapening the broad freedoms prescribed to actual publishers. James Madison never dreamed that a Senator would send messages to his constituents that make their phones buzz when they aren't being looked at. In my unvarnished opinion, that's not freedom of the press, it's something else.

It doesn't restrict states from legalizing further concessions, though.

Been reading about it with the Parkland stories.

Antonin Scalia wrote that the 2nd is not unlimited, it doesn't allow possession of any type of weapon for any use case, just a couple years before he died.

I can't find the article he was quoted in, but around the time of the last SCOTUS case related to 2nd, an NRA exec was on record, I'm paraphrasing, something like "the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting."

The right side of the argument allows the romanticized notions to flourish as political ammo.