There are many that see the current level of political division in this country as unprecedented. However, consider this passage carefully (aside from wishing that he could have broken up some of his run on sentences). It seems to be a pretty good description of what we are seeing and hearing today. He uses the word “faction,” but today it would be better understood as “party,” including the Tea Party:
“Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true.
“It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
So what does the author see as the principal cause of all the division in society that undermines fair and effective government?
“But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.
“The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.”
Note that he says that the regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern government. Which faction today has had the most outsized influence on government and society? I would argue strongly that it is the “Too Big to Fail” banks, like JPMorgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC) and Goldman Sachs (GS).
Also note that he sees economic inequality as being the biggest source of discord in the society. There are many today who believe the idea of taxing those who have done extremely well is somehow un-American. Yet the author suggests that it is the “various and unequal distribution of property” which causes the divisions in society and causes them to try to capture the government so as to tilt the rules of the game in their favor.
The tax code in particular is an area where the different factions would be most likely to find themselves in conflict. That all groups would try to fight for their advantage, and none would really hold the common good to be the most important thing, but one in which the most powerful would prevail. However today, I’m not sure that one can really equate the most numerous with the most powerful, as the author seems to suggest.
“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine?
“Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail.
“Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.”
So who was this crazy radical? James Madison, the fourth President of the U.S., Federalist Paper #10. The more things change…
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