Sathya Tadinada

Period 3

28 September 2020

The Federalist Papers

Federalist 10, authored by James Madison, talked primarily about why factions form and

what the citizens can do to prevent the destructive nature that they bring. Factions, which is

another name for a group of people, arise from a common interest among the people. Since there

are several different interests and opinions within a nation, the creation of such groups is

inevitable. Factions, in their most extreme form, tend to be a cause of destruction (in the sense

that they work against unity and polarize the country very quickly). There are two ways that

Madison discussed on how the nature of polarizing factions may be controlled. The first way is

to remove the causes and the other way is to control the effects of them.

With the first option, there are two other ways that causes can be eliminated, by either

removing people’s liberty or by giving everyone the same opinions. The first option for

removing the causes is impossible because even though liberty is one of the direct reasons for

factions, it is important to the very nature of political life. In addition, giving everyone the same

opinions and values will not work for the reason that as long as humans continue to be human

(meaning that they evolve and make mistakes) and have the liberty to share their discoveries,

there will always be differing opinions. Therefore, the causes for factions is built into human

society and cannot be changed.

To control the effects of factions, it is necessary to ensure that all factions are equally

represented. Having a minority be dominated by the majority via a popular vote is destructive

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and unrepresentative of all citizens in the nation. Therefore, a pure democracy has no solution for

the problems that factions create. There will always exist a majority with a common interest for

all matters and democratically voting on such topics will lead to oppression of the minority. To

counter this, a republic government (a government in which a group of people is represented by

an individual) protects the rights of the minority while also representing the majority. Having a

smaller group of people that the individual represents means that the minority opinion is

protected better.

I think that the arguments that Madison made in this Federalist document are all very

sound and logical. In our current day, the destructive/polarizing factions are very prevalent. This

has severed the political system of our nation. I also agree that everyone should have a fair say in

a discussion and the majority should not be the ones dominating (as this creates a political class

system, which will always favor the majority). Having a republic fixes these problems quite well,

as it both limits the destructive nature of factions by providing a voice to those in the minority.

That being said, I think there could be ways to improve our current republic to prevent the

destructive factions that we have today (namely, Republicans and Democrats). We know that

factions are inevitable and there is nothing we can do to stop the causes of them from happening,

so by implementing a system that uses a multi-party election process, it eliminates the toxicity

that these two parties currently have against each other. Having it this way can also offer a range

of ideas from both sides with the solution being the one that fits the best of both worlds.

Federalist No. 51 is another important paper written by Madison. This document goes

into the logic behind checks and balances as well as why they are necessary in a republic. The

reason that checks and balances exist, to be concise, is because it limits the abuse that any one

system can do. Governments are extensions of basic human nature, and the fact that we need

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government in the first place is a proof that humans tend to be selfish beings with personal

motives rather than the common good (Madison described this perfectly, “If men were angels, no

government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal

controls on government would be necessary.”) Since men rule over men in a government, there

needs to be a system that keeps everyone in balance without one branch getting too powerful.

One necessity that needs to be put in place for the system of checks and balances to work

is that all the branches need to be as independent of one another as possible. This would limit the

persuasion or power that a branch has over another branch. Another issue that would prevail is

that by default, the legislative branch is the dominant sector (which makes sense, since the

legislative branch creates all the laws that the citizens abide by). As a result of this, the

legislature must be split into different sections and then make each of them near-independent of

the other. By doing so, all the different branches can govern the people, govern themselves, and

govern each other. This creates a stable system of government with no sector having more power

over the other.

I think this paper makes a lot of sense and has a lot of interesting theories about human

nature and how the governing should be governed. In addition, it applies a lot more now than it

did back in the 18th century. With our current system of government, the executive branch tends

to get a lot of power with the judicial branch often referred to as the weakest branch. This system

of checks and balances, when used correctly, helps the citizens make sure that they are not being

led by or following rules created by “corrupt” sectors of the government.

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