barbtries a blog: Gaming American Democracy: | John Dean | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Gaming American Democracy: | John Dean | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

Gaming American Democracy: | John Dean | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia
A Closing Thought: Federalist No. 10’s Solution Is Not Applicable Here

When you delve into any radical conservative activity,
you quickly become drenched in all their constitutional
rhetoric, for it is endless. The GOP’s radical fringe
worships our Constitution—or what they believe our
Constitution says, which has little to do with reality.
Thus, in tracking their new power plays, I found myself
thinking about James Madison’s warning in Federalist
No. 10, a warning that contemporary conservatives ignore.
Madison, it will be recalled, addressed what conservatives
are now doing when he discussed the threat that factions
pose to our constitutional system.

Madison described a faction as “a number of citizens,
whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole,
who are united and actuated by some common impulse of
passion or of interests, adverse to the rights of other
citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interest of
the community.” Madison found factions to be incapable
of self-restraint, and pointed out that, for them, “neither
moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate
control.” He believed that the danger from factions was
very real, since they foster “the mortal diseases under
which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

this needs to be read and heeded throughout the land.

- posted by barbara @ 9/24/2011 05:39:00 AM

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