Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmo
For clarity, the National Archives attributes Madison or Hamilton as authors of Federalist No. 51. In fairness, the rest of the quoted sentence follows, bolding is mine:
"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."
Many other interesting topics covered in the document such as:
"In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as for religious rights."
https://founders.archives.gov/docume.../01-04-02-0199 |
True to an extent, but you only highlighted one clause and your unattributed last quotation is pretty ambiguous. What is meant by "civil rights" and in what ways does the treatment of religious rights inform our understanding of anything? What rights, if any, are absolute?
The people who wrote the Constitution were strongly influenced by Plato's thinking in "The Republic." Bluntly put, people are too ignorant, self-absorbed, and unstable to truly self govern. They were terrified of the self centered emotional nature of the people. The section you highlight is an example of Madison nodding to the anti-federalist opponents of the Constitution, but then doubling down on the need for a strong government in the unhighlighted clause.
The US Constitution is not and has never supportive of a "do what you want" approach to "freedom." Some of that generation saw that. Patrick Henry pretty much boycotted the Const. Convention. When asked why, he replied, "I smelt a rat."
You will, of course, find people twisting it to support all kinds of stuff, but those attempts, some by famous Supreme Court Justices, fall apart pretty quickly under close scrutiny.