Fed-Poast 39: The Before Times w/ J Maddy
As a result of coming across @ConstitutionDAO and going down the Constitution rabbit-hole, I found myself reading Federalist Paper 39 for the first time, written by James Madison, probably The Founding’s greatest pure political theorist & architect in my opinion. I think FP 39 is particularly illuminating given our (US) current situation. Plus its relatively short and to the point, which is neat.
R, F, & N, wat means?
In FP 39 Madison discusses republicanism, federalism, & nationalism trying to define them a tad more concisely for readers. Madison felt these concepts had become increasingly conflated, misunderstood, and abused by the chattering classes of his day who unfairly and misguidedly disparaged the proposed Constitution.
Madison begins with republicanism, claiming there have been so many governments in the historical record with so many different compositions and orientations that call themselves republic that it’s very difficult to create a meaning that we could all agree to. But Madison tries anyway and offers a definition of his own claiming that republics gain their political legitimacy by deriving power from the direct and/or indirect consent of many constituent groups with no favored classes among them, and generally appointment durations had expiration dates. Madison pointed to the abolition of nobility and titles in the US as well as plans for semi-regular voting to maintain accountability to the represented as great evidence in favor of the Constitution being consistent with the spirit of the republican form of government.
The interesting part in FP 39 is what Madison had to say about the dichotomy between nationalism and federalism, and what he envisioned the Constitution should be and would be.
Madison defined a nationalist government as a government that represents the population as a totality, in-aggregate, or as one abstraction. Whereas a federal government is a government that’s comprised of a composition of highly autonomous political units who are themselves stand-ins for that specific population as a totality. Madison makes it clear that the US “Federal” government being proposed was mostly a Federal government at its foundation. However, Madison makes it clear that the true Constitution is a blend of an overall Federal intention with some natively nationalist institutions like the House of Representatives(HoR).
Y?
Why was this so? Why were the architects of the Constitution emphasizing Federalism over Nationalism but not getting rid of Nationalism altogether?
At the time, Federalism was largely more attractive because the American States thought of themselves as little nations settled by very different people, with different preferences, accents, moral sentiments, economic interests, etc. This was a rag-tag & loose confederation of nations bequeathed by multiple empires who had many meaningful cultural differences and conflicts of interest that could have torn them apart if they were configured too tightly and too abstractly as a “People”. The American nations needed their political space to operate and cooperate.
When my fellow Amerifats lament, as we often hear, “omg it’s like we live in two different countries with different facts!” Listen brah/bisch we live in about 3–12 countries and you better get fuckin used to it because it alwayshasbeen.gif.
However, Madison did leave room for nationalism within the Federal government most notably through the House of Representatives. The American project and self government in the American colonies had been two centuries in the making, so being an American, or referring to the American People started to make some sense. Even amid the differences a somewhat unified entity/people was forming. By the 1830s a somewhat sophisticated observer like Alexander De Tocqueville could comment on the American people and their unique character(s) and ways of being in the world that made the American People a somewhat distinguishable entity.
Ok, so what?
I think this is all relevant today because the mix of a mostly Federal government with some nationalist institutions/processes embedded within a mostly Federal structure is not the government we live under now and we’re fundamentally out of balance.
If we fast forward to today we can see that the situation has inverted, and the American government is much more of a nationalist structure, in James’ definition of the word with some Federalist overhang.
Through the dramatic experiences in the War of 1812, Civil War, Progressive Era reforms, WW1, WW2, 60s era civil rights legislation, Post-911, and Post-GFC we had naturally lost our founding feelings of many peoples and states forming a loose but strong American union. States, in many ways, have become more and more like clients of the National government instead of key, autonomous political units of a Federation.
As such, the average voter often rightly prioritizes national issues over state issues because the national government affects citizens in some much more powerful ways than state governments and it has much more power to implement a citizen’s agenda over a wider geopolitical space. Winning national elections in America gives voters that intoxicating feeling of purifying not only the country with their sentiments and prescriptions but the entire World, especially post-WWII without having to do much of anything other than mail in a ballot after ingesting some tofu flavored soy salad or your large baconator with a large coke and large fry. If American elections matter, then by consequence we as voters “matter” when we win. Every voter gets a chance to play international and national dictator every four years or LARP as a resistance to one.
But there’s a twist, even though the Federal government has largely been nationalized formally, even hyper-nationalized in the Baudrillardian sense, individual Americans might have even less per-capita political power and influence over the Federal government than they did at the beginning of the Union of the States, which was designed to be very minimal and explicitly more Federal. Since the Founding, the number of citizens per congressional district has risen from an average of 33,000 in 1790 to over 700,000 as of 2018. I’m not a mathematician but that looks like a ~20x decrease in proportional voting power.
Before the 20th century, the number of representatives increased every decade as more states joined the union, and the population increased. The Nationalized government of the early 20th century effectively locked in a massive decrease in the voting power of the average voter and made sure it could only decline over time with population growth. The current cap for the house of reps is set at 437.
I didn’t write this to debate the merits or demerits of past nationalizations in government, culture, economics, these are old and nuanced debates but I do intend to point out that we still are and always have been a Union of at least two nations at any given time, and if we get really specific we can probably break the union into 3–12 coherent and somewhat self-sustaining, culturally coherent entities. Post-Trump & Post-Covid we can see these hidden truths that James Madison implies in FP 39 more clearly.
Balancing these orientations of (1) recognizing that yes there is something known as the “American People” but at the same time recognizing that this is not the whole story and that (2) the American “People” are and have always been comprised of many different American Nations that are extremely different, somewhat autonomous, and who are oftentimes engaged in a Cold Civil War if not a kinetic Civil War with each other.
Always Has Been
You should not be surprised that fervent Nationalism emerges in a heavily nationalized government & culture. You should not be surprised that you feel so different from many of your fellow voters and even hostility towards them/you explicitly or implicitly. You should not be surprised that many voters feel disenfranchised when the mechanisms for communicating their wants/needs/desires in a highly nationalized political environment have been designed to dilute over time.
At this moment in our history, it would do us all a lot of good to remember that We the People in the Constitution is constructed through a multiplicity of nations that come together to form an imperfect Union of the American People. This imperfection or impurity is part of our story, and this somewhat paradoxical situation should be embraced. I think if we do this, the Union can and should be maintained. But if we continue towards hyper-nationalization which materially manifests in hyper-bureaucratization, the outcomes will be unfortunate for ourselves and much of the world given our impressive global presence, influence, and capabilities.
“The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the govt are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national.”
-Publius (Madison’s alt-anon-account) in Federalist Paper 39
I think all sides, factions, parties, states, and individuals have a shared interest in preserving the balance between nationalism and federalism needed to preserve the Union of the American Nations transcribed in the Constitution itself.
P.S.
If you made it this far you’re probably some-what interested in buying the Constitution w/ @ConstitutionDAO the initiative I mentioned at the beginning of this rant.
Interesting project, check it out.
