3 ms·
It's important to remember the context in which the Federalist Papers were written. The Constitution had been written but not yet adopted, and American politic
by smacktoward 7y ago
It's important to remember the context in which the Federalist Papers were written.
The Constitution had been written but not yet adopted, and American politics was divided between Federalists, who believed that the Constitution was fine as it was and should be adopted without modification, and Anti-Federalists (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalism), who felt it gave too much power to the national government and should thus be rejected. The Bill of Rights was the compromise solution; it gave the Federalists their Constitution, but added specific protections against the abuses the Anti-Federalists feared.
The Federalist Papers were written by Federalists, with the goal of convincing people that the Constitution would work just fine as it was written, no modifications required. Hamilton was a Federalist, and his argument in Federalist 84 was part of that effort. In retrospect, however, given how much of what we today consider to be the genius of the Constitution is rooted in the Bill of Rights, it seems like in this case at least the Anti-Federalists had the better argument.
- SamBam 7y agoYes, I realize that. I was merely addressing the first sentence: "Alexander Hamilton was against the Bill of Rights.... This famous xkcd comic explains why:"
- smacktoward 7y agoOh, apologies for misreading you then! On that point, I think the problem is just that Thompson doesn't understand this context. He's treating Hamilton's objection to an amendment prohibiting speech as if it arose from a desire for broader protection of speech, rather than from a desire for no specific protection of speech at all. Hamilton's argument that a specific protection for speech would be counterproductive strikes me as having been pretty comprehensively debunked by the last two centuries of American history, in which the First Amendment has repeatedly proved to be a critical shield for speech of all sorts of kinds. America today would look very different if Hamilton had won this argument.
- dbuder 7y agoHamilton also removed unanimous decision from the 6th amendment because common law of jury trial already established that and he didn't want to specify some part of that common law and imply exclusion of other parts related to jury trials. This is now being heard by the Supreme Court in Ramos v Louisiana. This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nof3FQj90f8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nof3FQj90f8 is a good overview of how things are going so far in that case.