The Federalist Papers

The federalist papers are a series of articles defending the US consitution. It is not a "story" and is a struggle to get through. (It seems to be the type of source that you would use to extract "quotes" to support some viewpoint.) Many of the points are still applicable today. Some of the points are verified in the negative. In defending the president, one key point is that access to repeat elections is unfettered. Oops. Maybe the "lame duck" second term presidents we have is part of our problems today. Also, today's representative constituency has far exceeded the "optimal size".

The dates at the start of each "paper" help drill in the fact that the creation of the USA was a long process. A dozen years after 1776, the American continent is still far from having a unified country. At the time it was still much like an infant European Union. (Perhaps we should send this to the EU as they struggle to create a unified system while still maintaining autonomy.)

In the discussion of judges, the authors attempt to counteract the perceived weakness of the judiciary. Well, the judges have managed to take much of that into there own hands today. (And we are now having the opposite issue.) There are also many other tidbits of the debate. Some are still right-on today, while others are long since dated. These guys obviously spent a lot of time thinking about and supporting their pet cause, the US constitution.

James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights

[July 2009] This book starts out slowly, then starts to get better as it goes on, all in a rather dry (but no too dry) scholarly, yet popular tone. It provides a fairly detailed biography of James Madison from the end of the constitutional convention until the ratification of the Bill of Rights. An alternate subtitle could have just as well been "Madison vs. Henry", for Patrick Henry is set up as James Madison's persistent foil. The actual title is somewhat of a misnomer, for the battle over the Bill of Rights is given coverage as a second (and smaller) act, after the initial act of ratification of the constitution. As with many historical accounts, this book suffers from the availability of sources. Some well documented debates are given detailed coverage, while others without much historical record are barely passed over. This creates an illusion (however unfair) of mistaken significance of one event over the other. Though the focus is on Madison, there is very little attention given to events outside the "constitutional period." By a corollary, the book gives the impression that Madison was almost single-handedly responsible for dreaming up the constitution and driving its ratification. Aside from these shortcomings, it remains an interest take on the trials that had to be surmounted to give rise to the birth of the United States.