Establishing good government from reflection and choice

Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius, in Federalist Paper No. 11 on November 24, 1787. We had won our independence but had not yet figured out how to structure a government to fulfill our Classical Liberal aspirations. The Federalist Papers were the product of John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton writing collectively as Publius. They were talking through, among themselves and in the national discourse, the ideas of the time - consent of the governed, rule of law, universal rights, universal suffrage, equality before the law and other matters we still dwell upon today. With a clarity of thought and language that is remarkable.

As they put it:

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

What they produced was an entirely new model on a scale never envisaged before. It was flawed with squalid compromises and defects arising from their inherent circumstances, but it was, compared to all before, far closer to ideal. Not everyone could vote. Not everyone was free. But everyone had a vision of how that might be achieved.

In Federalist 11, Hamilton opens with a discussion about international relations and commerce - how should the weak and divided American colonies work together to establish a system of trade when their counterparts were powerful, wealthy, and established empires? In a few brief paragraphs, he lays out the challenge and proposes some solutions.

But then he beautifully transitions to the inspiring message of human universalism.

I shall briefly observe that our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs. The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has in different degrees extended her dominion over them all. Africa, Asia, and America have successively felt her domination. The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the mistress of the world, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound philosophers have in direct terms attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America-that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere. Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother moderation.

Yes, Europe reached incipient modernity first, but the ideals of human universalism have moved us past that historical fact.

The idea of human universalism is as radical today as in Hamilton's time. Establishment interests want people and peoples to stay in their places. Throw-backs want to keep fighting wars of the past. Racists want to insist that people should be treated as groups rather than as individuals and by their actions plume themselves as superior to others.

Enough with the anarchistic postmodernist social justice craven moral cripples of our punditry in pursuit of power over others. Far better to reread Jay, Adams, Hamilton and those clarion voices of our founding when the world was new and we were inspired to freedom of a new way of thinking and behaving towards one another. When we believed in consent and equality and respect.