What is the question?
One of the most famous passages in the Federalist Papers is found on page one of the first essay, Federalist number 1. It is written by Alexander Hamilton and it goes, “It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, 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.” Publius…
Approaching the question of force
Just stop for a minute and think about how that paragraph ends. Are we to be governed by reflection and choice? Or, are we to be governed by accident and force? What is it like when force rules? What do you really want to be and why do you want that?
Tyrants rule by force and are hated for that very reason. People never like to be forced to do things. We hate doing things against our will, without our consent. One of the things tyrants must do to achieve longevity in office is make war on every kind of excellence. Most especially they target the contemplative kinds, and specifically kinds owed to God. Tyrants cannot get their way with people who think there’s something higher than them to whom they answer.
As a result tyrants tend to do things to corrupt people. They interfere with the raising of children, and many other things. Hamilton’s question is a big one. One to which the American people are tasked to respond. The reason we were appointed to answer this question is because we were in the most favorable circumstances ever. We understood the principles of Liberty. Early Americans were very able to take care of themselves.
Reflecting on Americans
Americans are very independent individually and as a group. We all immigrated to get here or were born here. We had been here about 150 years as we approached writing the constitution and we had built a society. The post Revolutionary period was a chance to start over and correct the British colonial errors. It was a lot like the old western movies we see today. There were always lots of guns, force and action but someone always had a book.
A classic example is “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. In the movie Jimmy Stewart is the lawyer who’s always got a law book. There isn’t anybody around to enforce the law. There isn’t any facility around to write or print such a law book. The law all comes from someplace back east. They are out on the frontier. Stewart is trying to establish the law. It is an enormous leg up that he knew what it was or ought to be. That was the case of the people who founded America. They knew about civilization and law and that it was precious… but also they got to start over.
There weren’t really a lot of priorities among them. That fact alone justifies Hamilton’s statement that it is up to us to prove that we could form political institutions to govern ourselves by reflection and choice. We could all get together and talk. We had the time to think before acting. That is a luxury most nations did not have and/or did not take advantage of. Politics is fundamentally about talking. The human gift is our ability to talk. Only humans do that, which means we can decide questions of justice and injustice, advantage and disadvantage.
Conclusion:
Hamilton welcomes Federalist readers to one of the most significant deliberations in the history of the world as he puts it. It proves something for all time. The reason it could prove it for all time, in his opinion, was if it cannot be done here, then it cannot be done. This was the best chance ever. That is the perspective of “The Federalist Papers”.