Thursday, August 28, 2014

Federalist #10 and #51

Federalist #10 talks about how an effective and strong government must be able to control the damage created by arguing factions.  This is only possible by two different solutions, one, remove its causes or control its effects.  To remove its causes is impossible in a functioning republic because then you need to either take away liberty or have every person have the same opinions, passions and interests.  Factions are inevitable in a democracy, because people with different amounts of wealth, different goals in life, and different beliefs about liberty will not agree and thus won't work together to get what they want out of legislature.  Another thing that government needs to restrict, are people working in the government who are working not for the country's better as a whole but rather their wealth or something not good.  But with the larger the population, the less likely it is for this to happen because it becomes harder to mask their attentions to larger upon larger audiences.  Larger democracies help against mob mentalities because with more people there are more factions and thus mob mentality becomes harder to achieve.  The purpose of these papers are to bring the 13 colonies together and unite them into one strong nation to protect against other nations.

Federalist #51 talks about how the three separate branches, should be completely independent from each other.  Where the legislative and executive branches are elected by the people and the judicial is chosen by the executive with the consent of the legislative.  The government must be able to control the people but also it must be able to control itself.  Justice is the purpose of government and civil society.  If the government allows or encourages the strong to combine against the weak, anarchy will ensue, and when anarchy ensued any government is admitted by the people.  Self government flourishes in large countries with many different groups of people; if it gets too large its hard to handle; but with this system its practical and possible.

1 comment:

  1. Varun, great job addressing the three branches of government. You have some really helpful insight that encourages deeper thinking in regards to governing in paragraph 2. Also, highlighting the fact that the government is supposed to ensure justice is a very good point of reference while reading the articles.

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