The Federalist Papers #10

In the Federalist Papers #10, Madison writes eloquently about the dangers of factions within politics. In class, we initially defined a faction as a subgroup of people who share a common goal. Then, we went on to say that for our purposes in class, a faction is a subgroup of a political party. For example, today’s Tea Party is a faction of the larger Republican Party. The members of the Tea Party are bound together by their extremely-conservative ideology, which is far to the right of mainstream Republican politics. In class, we also talked about some of the pitfalls surrounding factions:

1)      Factions are divisive

2)      They create political instability

3)      They can either end up being ignored (if too small/weak) or getting too powerful. 

Madison also tells us that there are two ways of “curing the mischiefs of the faction…the one, by removing its causes; the other by controlling its effects.” He goes on to explain that removing the causes of factions requires using one of two strategies:

             1) “destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence” 
              2)  or (in a nutshell) telling everyone exactly what to believe.

Of course, Madison finds both of these solutions unacceptable. Madison then explains that since we can’t really remove the causes of factions, we are left to try to control its effects.

He goes on to talk about the difference between a republic and a democracy. A pure democracy “can admit of no cure from tor the mischiefs of faction." 

A republic, by contrast, through use of a document like The Constitution can control the actions of factions through mechanisms like voting and process.

Madison points out, and I have to agree, that people love to argue. He also explains that given a lack of anything important to fight about, people will fight about trivial matters.

In getting ready to write my paper, I will say that Madison was indeed correct in his argument that a well-written Constitution would be helpful in making sure that factions/special interests are neither squashed, nor do they become too powerful.