Federalist Paper #10

This is the first of the Federalist Papers written by James Madison, and I knew that it was one of the important ones (it's weird how we pick up these things just from being out in the world, you know [without knowing how you know], Romeo and Juliet kill themselves, Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train, Federalist Paper #10 is one of the important ones).

At any rate Madison appears to be extremely sensible about many things but he absolutely fails to predict the internet, whoops.

(Also, it seems like I was so excited to get to #10 that I skipped #9, double whoops.)

FEDERALIST No. 10. The Same Subject Continued (The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection)

Madison begins the essay by correctly identifying the dangers of faction. He also helpfully defines what a faction is, specifying that it differs from other groups of people in the sense that it focuses on an idea or goal that will be detrimental to other people's rights:

AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. [...] 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.

Then he says that we could crush factions by crushing liberty, but we don't want to do that because liberty is the whole point of this experiment.

That said, factions tend to develop because people have different capabilities and therefore tend towards different outcomes in life (he uses the phrase "different degrees and kinds of property" to express some of these divergent outcomes). And no, you can't solve for factions by teaching everyone to be rational, first because humans are fallible (those exact words, two centuries before Popper would philosophize the same thing) and second because even the most rational of humans must filter that rationality through their own self-interest.

In other words, even two of the smartest and most well-intentioned people may want different things (e.g. Hamilton and Jefferson, I wonder if Madison was also thinking of those two specific examples).

Of course, it's the less rational, less well-intentioned people that we have to worry about, and the best way to avoid a situation in which they form a majority and take control of the government is by setting up a democratic republic!

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. [...] A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.

Here's where Madison starts to lose the plot, as the kids used to say.

First, he argues that our representatives will obviously be among the best individuals, the most rational, the most well-intentioned, nobody would go to the trouble of becoming a politician just to push the concerns of their faction, and even if they did, the voters would recognize this duplicity and refuse to elect them.

In fact, we can belt-and-suspenders this problem by ensuring that a large enough group of voters elect every representative that the rational voters will always outnumber the irrational or factional ones!

In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.

And then he tells us that one of the great strengths of the Union is its size, because the people will literally be spread so far apart that the ideas of one faction will never be able to propagate beyond its immediate area. Like, we just won't be able to communicate bad ideas to each other, therefore bad ideas will never become memetic mind viruses.

Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.

JAMES MADISON FAILED TO PREDICT REDDIT AND 4CHAN

(but then again, how could he have)

But also, you know, Madison should have known about memes. That "don't tread on me" snake was already a thing, for example; not only was it on flags and whatnot, but Benjamin Franklin had also spent a year handing out "Join or Die" snake cartoons to everyone he saw. I mean, sure, that was 1754 and James Madison was only three years old, but still. He should have known that ideas can spread beyond their hometowns.

Madison ends the piece by listing three of the theoretical factions that a well-organized democratic republic should be able to prevent:

A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State. In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.

We'll just leave that where it is, and I'll go back and read Federalist #9.