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#the constitution
fictional-authority · 28 days
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pub-lius · 3 months
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do you know how hamilton felt about the madison-hamilton fallout? just realized everything i know about it is from madison’s perspective
oho boy do i
This has actually been a subject of interest of mine since I read The Three Lives of James Madison by Noah Feldman (great book, highly recommend). In the study of Alexander Hamilton, this is a crucial event that would define his proceeding political actions.
For some background for those who may not know what anon is referencing, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were colleagues and "friends" (if you could call it that) from their time in the Confederation Congress until Hamilton submitted his financial plan to Congress, which was all in all about a decade. In that time, they lobbied for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation, worked together in the Constitutional Convention, and wrote The Federalist papers together in defense of strong federal government together. The Federalist was like the manifesto of the Federalist party, which placed Hamilton at the head of that party, and, arguably, James Madison as well, until he switched to the Democratic Republican party.
Hamilton's experience was far different from Madison's, just in general, but especially when it came to close friendships between men. The closest relationship he had before James Madison was with John Laurens, who we know died tragically in 1782. Although we are all aware of my feelings on rat bastard Ron Chernow, I thought that this excerpt of his biography of Hamilton described this point very well.
"[Laurens'] death deprived Hamilton of the political peer, the steadfast colleague, that he was to need in his tempestuous battles to consolidate the union. He would enjoy a brief collaboration with James Madison... But he was more of a solitary crusader without Laurens, lacking an intimate lifelong ally such as Madison and Jefferson found in each other," (Alexander Hamilton, Chernow 172-73)
As Chernow mentioned, James Madison was already closely associated with Thomas Jefferson, who he kept well appraised of the circumstances in America while Jefferson was serving a diplomatic position in France. In my personal opinion, I think it was largely due to this that Madison began to attack Hamilton later on, since as soon as Jefferson arrived back from Paris, Madison suddenly had severe moral oppositions to Hamilton's plan, rather than just rational apprehension.
I also want to touch on Hamilton's perspective in their friendship, along with their fallout, specifically when it comes to The Federalist. Hamilton put such a high value on his work, and he held himself to a very high standard. There are a couple instances of him outsourcing his work to other men he admired, such as his last political stance, that the truth of an accusation can be used in libel cases. He asked several men to help him in writing a larger treatise on the matter than what he was able to make (due to yk the bullet that got put in his diaphragm), but these weren't just his friends. These men were very crucial figures in American law, which shows that, unlike men like Jefferson, he was very selective in who he chose to associate with when it came to his work.
This wasn't any different in 1787. When he chose John Jay and James Madison to assist in writing The Federalist, his reasons for both had nothing to do with their personal relationships. Jay was one of the most successful legal minds of the new country, and James Madison, was not only a Virginian, but was an absolute genius and fucking workhorse. If you like him or not, or if you like the Constitution or not, its undeniable that the Virginia Plan was absolute fucking genius, and Hamilton knew that.
This also shows a great amount of trust in Madison. Hamilton was an incredibly untrusting dude. He kept most of his emotions and personality away from work, and really the only people who knew who he was entirely were close family, one or two family friends included. They were the only people who knew his background, which is directly tied into his work, which was the most important thing to him. Without his work, in his eyes, he would have nothing. So for him to trust Madison with something he and the world viewed as one of his most important contributions to American history, that was incredibly significant.
Also I should mention that Hamilton definitely knew how important The Federalist would be, and this is clear in his introductory essay, which is confirmed that he himself wrote.
One thing that any Hamilton historians will agree on is that he was so set in his ways. If there was a moral or philosophical question before him, he would think about it constantly, consult his books and his peers, and once he decided on his stance, there was little to no chance of changing that. The Federalist are, if not anything else, the basis of Hamilton's political thinking. Hamilton, being the arrogant bitch that he was, assumed that every other genius would be equally steadfast in their beliefs.
But James Madison was different in that regard. He was also very tied in with his state's interest, as well as that of the planter class. Hamilton also had a strong bias towards his state and class, but not with the same attitude as someone who was born into it.
Therefore, when Madison openly opposed his Report on Public Credit with a speech in the House of Representatives, Hamilton viewed it as a deep betrayal of his trust, his work, and his principles. Hamilton saw this as a devastating insult to everything he stood for by someone he thought he could completely rely on. This was the 18th century burn book.
That speech immediately kicked off Hamilton lobbying to oppose Madison's counter-proposal, which he won because, frankly, Madison hadn't been expecting Hamilton to immediately come at him with the full arsenal, but Hamilton didn't half-arsenal anything. It was after that that Hamilton was able to process what had happened. According to one of Hamilton's allies, Manasseh Cutler, Hamilton saw Madison's opposition as "a perfidious desertion of the principles which [Madison] was solemnly pledged to defend." Ouch.
The final break between them was on the subject of the National Bank aspect of Hamilton's plan. This is when Madison redefined himself as a Democratic-Republican with a firm belief in strict construction of the Constitution, giving Hamilton free reign to take out his hurt feelings on him through the art of pussy politics* and this entirely dissolved the friendship that had once been there.
*pussy politics (noun): a form of politics in which grown men act like pussies by only supporting the governmental actions that benefit their families/wealth/land/class/etc. and it is very embarrassing and frustrating to sit through
Hamilton would spend a large part of his career battling Madison, and talking a lot of shit about him, which is what has allowed me to paint this stupid ass picture of two grown men fighting over banks. The personal language that he uses in regards to Madison is very different to the accusatory tone he took with his other enemies, and that in it of itself says a lot, but I hope this was able to shed some light on why Hamilton felt the way he did and what exactly he felt. Again, I love talking about this, so feel free to ask follow up questions!
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odinsblog · 10 months
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“Last year, the Supreme Court, in an originalist opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, held that the Second Amendment precludes virtually any gun control limitations that were not widely employed historically.
Thomas argued that if our nation doesn't already have a long and demonstrable historical tradition of limiting access to firearms in a particular way, then the government is not permitted to enact such a limitation today.
But of course, the vast majority of modern gun control laws don't have clear historical analogues. We didn't face the same concerns back then. Guns were much less sophisticated and much less deadly, and our society was very different. Of course, we didn't enact laws way back then to address today's unique concerns.
A few months ago, relying on that originalist decision of the Supreme Court, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the federal law prohibiting persons under a restraining order for domestic violence or domestic abuse from owning a gun.
At the time of the framing, domestic abuse was not a crime.
A husband had a legal right to assault or even to rape his wife. Thus, historically, there obviously were no laws preventing domestic abusers from owning a gun.
Therefore, under the Supreme Court's originalist rule, such a law is unconstitutional today. And thus, the Fifth Circuit struck the federal law down.
But of course, historically, women were considered to have virtually no rights at all. And women had no ability to vote, no ability to hold public office, no ability to participate in the political process by which the historical laws determining the scope of permissible gun regulation were made.
In that bygone era, the laws way back then were made by the men doing the beating, not by the women being abused.
And yet, originalism tells us that the fact that the exclusionary, unjust political process of a long gone age did not protect domestic abuse victims means that all federal, state and local governments everywhere today are powerless to protect those women.
Every single day in America in 2023, multiple women are shot and killed by domestic partners, and the government can do nothing to keep them safe, because 200 years ago, the men in power didn't think that domestic abuse was a problem.
That's no way to decide constitutional law cases in the 21st century.
It's just not.”
—Prof. Thomas Colby, NO, the Supreme Court should not focus on the ‘originalist’ meaning of the Constitution
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excitementshewrote · 2 years
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shutupthepunx111 · 6 months
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two sentence horror story
i needed to read the constitution.
...but i didnt wanna :(
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The base of the Republican party abandoned faith in the Constitution as soon as they figured out they were a shrinking minority of the population and the Constitution guarantees rule by the majority, Sen Mitt Romney concedes. “Some nights [Romney] vented,” Coppins wrote of their conversations; “other nights he dished.” And then came a quiet acknowledgement that should still be shocking, even after seven years of unhinged right-wing American populism:
“A very large portion of my party,” [Romney] told me one day, “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.” He’d realized this only recently, he said. We were a few months removed from an attempted coup instigated by Republican leaders, and he was wrestling with some difficult questions. Was the authoritarian element of the GOP a product of President Trump, or had it always been there, just waiting to be activated by a sufficiently shameless demagogue? And what role had the members of the mainstream establishment—­people like him, the reasonable Republicans—played in allowing the rot on the right to fester?
I think every decent Republican has wondered the same thing. (The indecent ones have also wondered about it, but as Romney now accepts, people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have figured out that playing to the rot in the GOP base is a core skill set that helps them stay in Washington and far away from their constituents back home.) https://www.theatlantic.com/.../mitt-romney.../675327/...
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quote-bomber · 10 months
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We hate to admit it but the Constitution has become nothing more than words on paper to our public officials and law enforcement. Here are 13 examples proving that the oath public servants take, now is basically worthless.
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earlymodernbarbie · 2 years
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It’s so funny to me (and by funny I mean horrifying) how the opinions of the Founding Fathers only matter to conservatives when it can be used to their advantage. Like they’ll go hard for the second amendment and shit, but the moment you point out to them that many of the founders were pro-separation of church and state, and in some cases, against religion, it’s crickets. The entire basis of the pro-life movement is the Christian religion. Today’s decision is exactly what the Founding Fathers were trying to prevent, and yet conservatives act like they’re talking to Thomas Jefferson through a Ouija board. Anyways to quote the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” And to quote the author of the Constitution(James Madison) “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship.” And one last one from Mr. Declaration of Independence himself, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. Erecting a wall of separation between church and state is absolutely essential in a free society”
*note: I am not trying to put these men on a pedestal, many of them were slave owners and or ok with the horrors of slavery. They were not good men. I am just trying to point out the hypocrisy*
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googlecourt · 5 months
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I think it’s fair to say that the Federal Government has far outgrown its original purpose. Originally the government and the Constitution it’s bound by were just meant to be a loose union between the states, only concerning itself with interstate or international issues. Now “the government” is synonymous with the Federal Government and now it’s just assumed that the President and Congress control everything and not the people from your state that you actually live in. The Constitution simply wasn’t designed for a federal government like this
Some people see this problem and think we should just discard the Constitution since it’s outdated and only holding back progress anyway
Some other people see this problem and think we should scale back the Federal Government’s power so it functions under the role it was designed to fill, and local matters are decided by smaller more easily influenced local governments
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https://twitter.com/fansince09/status/1521548105883152389
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lisareadsthings · 1 year
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The original public purpose for a citizens’ militia was not some theoretical worry about standing armies or an idealized right of citizens’ militias to resist federal power. Instead the original purpose was a practical concern that the antislavery North would leave the South vulnerable to slave revolts. Scalia omits that rationale. And of course he has to. Because grounding the case for “self-defense” that satisfies the NRA’s permissiveness of shooting Black children walking home with Skittles, in an amendment designed to help slavers keep people in bondage, would be a little too on the nose. If Scalia told the truth about the original purpose of the Second Amendment, people might realize that the Second Amendment is illegitimate, or that looking to the original intentions of the people who wanted it is monstrous, or both.
Now, one can argue that the Second Amendment has evolved, past its purely evil original intent, to encompass a right to self-defense. I’d be willing to hear such an argument, because I don’t think the Constitution means only what slavers and colonizers wanted it to mean. But conservatives won’t make that argument. Here we see another example where making the intellectually stronger argument doesn’t take conservatives where they want to go. If they accept that the Second Amendment has evolved to protect a different right than was originally intended, then they’d have to admit that gun restrictions can also evolve to better protect our modern society.
Elie Mystal, Allow Me to Retort
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lebuc-reblogs · 1 year
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George R. Newall - the creator of “Schoolhouse Rock,” has passed away at the age of 88. Rest in Peace
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