IT'S PROBABLE, I THINK that the reason you hear so much about the federalist papers, the propaganda of those who favored the adoption of the Constitution of 1787 and so little about the antifederalists who, in so many cases proved to be far better predictors of the immediate and even extended history of the United States under the form of government that the federalists invented is because of the financial and political and ideological interests in the worst aspects of that history, often predicted by the antifederalists. While I may be skeptical as to the indisputable (irrefragable) character of what was deduced from the peculiarities of the various histories of countries under the various governments of 18th century Europe, these paragraphs from Cato 3 (often believed to be George Clinton) have more resonance to our life under the Constitution today than seems likely to be the product of chance (adventitious) circumstances.
The governments of Europe have taken their limits and form from adventitious circumstances, and nothing can be argued on the motive of agreement from them; but these adventitious political principles, have nevertheless produced effects that have attracted the attention of philosophy, which has established axioms in the science of politics therefrom, as irrefutable as any in Euclid. It is natural, says Montesquieu, to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist: in a large one, there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are too great deposits to intrust in the hands of a single subject, an ambitious person soon becomes sensible that he may be happy, great, and glorious by oppressing his fellow citizens, and that he might raise himself to grandeur, on the ruins of his country. In large republics, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; in a small one the interest of the public is easily perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have a less extent, and of course are less protected--he also shews you, that the duration of the republic of Sparta, was owing to its having continued with the same extent of territory after all its wars; and that the ambition of Athens and Lacedemon to command and direct the union, lost them their liberties, and gave them a monarchy.
From this picture, what can you promise yourselves, on the score of consolidation of the United States, into one government--impracticability in the just exercise of it-- your freedom insecure--even this form of government limited in its continuance--the employments of your country disposed of to the opulent, to whose contumely you will continually be an object--you must risque much, by indispensably placing trusts of the greatest magnitude, into the hands of individuals, whose ambition for power, and aggrandizement, will oppress and grind you--where, from the vast extent of your territory, and the complication of interests, the science of government will become intricate and perplexed, and too misterious for you to understand, and observe; and by which you are to be conducted into a monarchy, either limited or despotic; the latter, Mr. Locke remarks, is a government derived from neither nature, nor compact.
It is one of the stupidest products of our ideology ridden and driven age that so many figure someone has to agree with you entirely to have anything worth listening to or agreeing with. I think even with the antifederalists the most glaring problem with their analyses was one they shared with the federalists, they undervalued the role that equality of People and its lack was responsible for bad government. They were all educated, mostly well off or aspiring to be white men who were part of the dominantly Protestant establishment, people who are part of such a minority are unlikely to notice the evils that come from the thing that gives them their advantage. Instead the antifederalists focused on the thing of paramount interest to those who are advantaged, "liberty." Liberty isn't a virtue in and of itself, "men of large fortune," "an ambitious person," allowed the liberty that generally accumulates in the privileged, the accidentally wealthy or those who opportunity, ability and chance situation allowed to accumulate wealth will exercise it against the needs and good of other People, one of the worst defects in the U.S. Constitution is that it was written by such men to their advantage and especially its interpretation by courts and, worst of all, the Supreme Court has enhanced that kind of anti-egalitarian liberty using the Constitution and the slogans of the 18th century to enforce inequality and to gull even those well disposed to be egalitarian against that. That has been a tendency from the start, it is why such as the supposedly anti-slavery "justice" Joseph Storey wrote what was the most appalling pro-slavery decision before Dred Scott, the Prig decision and why the ACLU has been entirely more a force for the enhancement of the power of oligarchs, fascists and some of our most malignant industries and corporations than they have for the common good.
In reading the antifederalists, you have to take into account the same things you have to when reading the Epistles of Paul, they were writing to an audience of their time, speaking in terms of the conditions and realities of their times. Keep that in mind while reading this section:
The people, who may compose this national legislature from the southern states, in which, from the mildness of the climate, the fertility of the soil, and the value of its productions, wealth is rapidly acquired, and where the same causes naturally lead to luxury, dissipation, and a passion for aristocratic distinctions; where slavery is encouraged, and liberty of course, less respected, and protected; who know not what it is to acquire property by their own toil, nor to oeconomise with the savings of industry--will these men therefore be as tenacious of the liberties and interests of the more northern states, where freedom, independence, industry, equality, and frugality, are natural to the climate and soil, as men who are your own citizens, legislating in your own state, under your inspection, and whose manners, and fortunes, bear a more equal resemblance to your own?
I can honestly be pointed out that the things attributed to People from southern states in the late 1780s are hardly confined to those from the southern states now, when you are as likely to find dangerous concentrations of anti-egalitarians in any of the northern states, those in the mid-west, the Rockies, the west coastal states (especially in the more Eastern sections of those), in the cities as well as in the most regressive rural districts, etc. Though it is undeniably a feature of our history and especially our politics that the dominant economic interests of the wealthiest Americans - the slave owning plantation economic class - harnessing racism among all classes, including those who had the most of a common cause with the enslaved, is as relevant to understanding American politics now as it was when the South Carolina and Georgia delegates to the Constitutional Convention were insisting on some of the worst anti-democratic features that are in it. Though I will point out that some of the framers from he northern states, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut for example, were as vehemently anti-democratic as any of the current Republican-fascists are.
It may be suggested, in answer to this, that whoever is a citizen of one state, is a citizen of each, and that therefore he will be as interested in the happiness and interest of all, as the one he is delegated from; but the argument is fallacious, and, whoever has attended to the history of mankind, and the principles which bind them together as parents, citizens, or men, will readily perceive it. These principles are, in their exercise, like a pebble cast on the calm surface of a river, the circles begin in the center, and are small, active, and forcible, but as they depart from that point, they lose their force, and vanish into calmness.
Instead of the concentration on citizenship in a state (remember Cato was arguing to New Yorkers against the legislature adopting the Constitution) far more relevant to the general American population are economic class differences, differences in race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. The "principles which bind them together" are a lot more fractured than what Cato presented in his arguments, there were slave-owning New Yorkers who had an economic and so personal interest in the prosperity of the slave economy of the Southern States - as I've pointed out here, Alexander Hamilton made appeals for the adoption of the Constitution based on the financial benefits to those of his class in some of the worst, most violent and literally deadly aspects of the Southern slave economy. Here's something I wrote pointing that out.
The Senate gives a minority the power to thwart the will of the majority, that makes it inherently a place of immorality. It was set up to give the slave states enhanced power over states in which the majority were developing a consensus against slavery, it was intentionally and explicitly set up that way, Alexander Hamilton peddling the Constitution with such anti-democratic features to the Northern legislatures by appealing to the financial benefit they derived from the slave economy of the South. He said to the New York ratification convention:
It is the unfortunate situation of the Southern States to have a great part of their population, as well as property in blacks. The regulation complained of was one result of the spirit of accommodation which governed the Convention ; and without this indulgence, NO UNION COULD POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN FORMED. But. sir, considering some peculiar advantages which we derive from them, it is entirely JUST that they should be gratified. The Southern States posses certain staples --tobacco, rice, indigo, &c., – which must be capital objects in treaties of commerce with foreign nations ; and the advantage which they necessarily procure in these treaties will be felt throughout all the States.
Though as the country developed, especially through the mechanisms that ensured that regional rivalries and resentments - and their potential use in the worst kinds of politics - would develop to ensure that the Senate was a power for a right-wing minority, preventing change that favors equality and morality.
Ellsworth of Connecticut made it clear that Hamilton and every other member of the Constitutional Convention understood the nature of what they were doing and that especially under slavery, it was what I have noted are the Krupps and IG Farbens of 18th century America whose interests were so tenderly represented in the Constitutional Convention, with Northern financial interests taking up their cause.
Ellsworth said: "As slaves multiply so fast in Virginia and Maryland that it is cheaper to raise than import them, whist in the sickly rice swamps foreign supplies are necessary, if we go no farther than is urged, we shall be unjust towards South Carolina and Georgia. Let us not inter-meddle. As population increases; poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless."
I also said: That Oliver Ellsworth anticipated the day when poor whites would take the place of enslaved blacks, no doubt anticipating the economics of using up and killing off workers you weren't allowed to access as your personal property, is not a surprise. Have I mentioned he was one off the vilest of the idolized founders?
You can read more of what I said back then.
But this is about the empowerment of the stupidest, most ignorant, most lying, most morally degenerate and literally criminal person to have ever attained the presidency and do everything up to and abolishing the most obvious of Constitutional limits on him is able to, in fact do that under the Constitution. And who in the late 18th century was correct in predicting what would happen. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has said to me that what Trump is doing is "unconstitutional" because our Constitution started out bad, as the antifederalists saw, and it was made far worse by the action of the Supreme Court and the Congress, especially the Senate. The pretense that you have to go through the prescribed ratification process to change the Constitution is total and absolute bullshit because it's been done constantly, first in the original Marbury decision which changed one law WHICH WAS NOT ONLY DRAFTED BY ONE OF THE FRAMERS, ELLSWORTH BUT VOTED INTO LAW BY A CONGRESS MANNED BY SOME OF THE MOST EMINENT OF THE FRAMERS but which, starting with the Dred Scott decision which was the first, very deadly application of the Marbury power grab has been gaining in power and frequency ever since. There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the Congress the power to give the executive their power to make war, probably among the most seriously important things in the Constitution - what Trump has done in Venezuela this week on behalf of Chevron, apparently, but the "originalists" and "textualists" of the Supreme Court will not do a thing to enforce it.
While thinking about the secular priestcraft of the Roberts Court in regard to this, remember this passage above.
. . . you must risque much, by indispensably placing trusts of the greatest magnitude, into the hands of individuals, whose ambition for power, and aggrandizement, will oppress and grind you--where, from the vast extent of your territory, and the complication of interests, the science of government will become intricate and perplexed, and too misterious for you to understand, and observe; and by which you are to be conducted into a monarchy. . .
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