Philosopher views

THE ANTI-FEDERALIST VISION OF SMALLER GOVERNMENT IS SUPERIOR

1. IT IS EMPIRICALLY SHOWN THAT ONLY SMALL GOVERNMENTS AVOID CORRUPTION

Brutus, Anti-Federalist Writer, FROM MANY, ONE: READINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THOUGHT, 1997, p. 37.

In a large republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too great to be placed in any single subject; he has interest of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy, great and glorious, by oppressing his fellow citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country. In a large republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses are of less extent, and of course are less protected.” History furnishes no example of a free republic, any thing like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.

Brutus, Anti-Federalist Writer, FROM MANY, ONE: READINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THOUGHT, 1997, p. 38.

In a republic, the manners, sentiments, and interests of the people should be similar. If this be not the case, there will be a constant clashing of opinions; and the representatives of one part will be continually striving against those of the other. This will retard the operations of government, and prevent such conclusions as will promote the public good. If we apply this remark to the condition of the United States, we shall be convinced that it forbids that we should be one government. The United States includes a variety of climates. The productions of the different parts of the union are very variant, and their interests, of consequence, diverse. Their manners and habits differ as much as their climates and productions; and their sentiments are by no means coincident. The laws and customs of the several states are, in many respects, very diverse, and in some opposite; each would be in favor of its own interests and customs, and, of consequence, a legislature, formed of representatives from the respective parts, would not be too numerous to act with any care or decision, but would be composed of such heterogenous and discordant principles, as would constantly be contending with each other.
3. SMALLER SCALE POLITICS ALLOW FOR HAPPINESS VIA A GENUINE PUBLIC SPHERE

Christopher Duncan, Professor of Political Science, THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS AND EARLY AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1995, p. 170-171.

The question the Anti-Federalists worried about was not how we organize our polity for order and greatness but how we organize our polity for public happiness and political salvation. Agrippa’s claims that “freedom is necessary for industry” and that “in absolute governments, the people, be the climate what it may be, are in general lazy, cowardly, turbulent, and vicious to an extreme” are but his way of saying that without the sense of attachment and empowerment that comes with public participation, there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no happiness. This is the theoretical thread that ties Anti—Federalist thought together. It is the notion that the Constitution as a centralizing, ultimately disempowering, document will leave them bereft of their power to save themselves, that it will ultimately, in the words of Hannah Arendt, “banish the citizens from the public realm into the privacy of their households, and demand of them that they mind their own private business.” This would certainly be a torturous existence for a people who believed their individual chance for redemption was tied intimately to their shared public life. Self-government for the Anti-Federalists was not just a mechanistic device to ensure the safety of their fortunes, it was an opportunity to transform themselves and expand their circle of concerns while encouraging others to do the same. Political participation for the Anti-Federalists became an end to be pursued as well as a means.

ANTI-FEDERALISM GIVES RIGHTS AND PREVENTS DISCRIMINATION

1. ONLY SMALLER LIMITED GOVERNMENTS ALLOW LIBERTY

Cato, Anti-Federalist Writer, FROM MANY, ONE: READINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THOUGHT, 1997, p. 42.

From this picture, what can you promise yourselves, on the score of consolidation of the United States, into one government—impracticability in the just exercise of it—your freedom insecure—even this form of government limited in its continuance—the employments of your country disposed of to the opulent, to whose contumely you will continually be an object—you must risque much, by indispensably placing trusts of the greatest magnitude, into the hands of individuals, whose ambition for power, and aggrandizement, will oppress and grind you—where, from the vast extent of your territory, and the complication of interests, the science of government will become intricate and perplexed, and too mysterious for you to understand, and observe; and by which you are to be conducted into a monarchy, either limited or despotic; the latter, Mr. Locke remarks, is a government derived from neither nature, nor compact. Political liberty, the great Montesquieu again observes, consists in security, or at least in the opinion we have of security; and this security therefore, or the opinion, is best obtained in moderate governments, where the mildness of the laws, and the equality of the manners, beget a confidence in the people, which produces this security, or the opinion. This moderation in governments, depends in a great measure on their limits, connected with their political distribution.

James Etienne Viator, Associate Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans School of Law, LOYOLA JOURNAL OF PUBLIC INTEREST LAW, Spring, 2000, p. 37-8.

Furthermore, the phenomenon of white bloc voting makes race-conscious districting a properly narrow means to further the "compelling interest" in full freedom for black Americans -- the compelling interest of solving racial problems through representation in Congress by those who share a commitment to this unique interest in political liberty on account of their membership in the historically "raced" community. Using an innovative mixture of campaign news stories and public opinion surveys of voters, Keith Reeves demonstrated the continued presence of bigoted attitudes among white voters, which results in the continuing existence of white bloc voting; and this racially biased voting excludes blacks from the fair and equal representation recommended both by the Anti-Federalists and Section 2 of the VRA. It is this stubborn persistence of racially polarized voting that confirms the enduring wisdom of and necessity for the Anti-Federalist view that representatives should be "made of the same stuff collectively as their constituents." Thus, shared racial experience and the legacy of white hostility and bigotry constitute the compelling reason for majority-black districts as a necessary means to effectuate the Anti-Federalist insight that in order to guarantee liberty "like best represents like."
ONLY ANTI-FEDERALIST POLITICS ALLOW TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE MULTIPLICITY OF INTERESTS

Christopher Duncan, Professor of Political Science, THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS AND EARLY AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1995, p. 78.

In other words, they have agreed to protect each other from external dangers to their collective—not individual—liberties, and to work together, not on questions of the general welfare but on questions of mutual and general welfare. If that latter clause is read correctly, it should be clear that there was no such thing as the general welfare of the country; rather, there was a series of particular “welfares” that could only be considered general when in fact the question at issue was one of mutual concern as determined by the state itself. The distinction here is once again of critical importance from a theoretical perspective, in that under the Articles of Confederation there was no “truth or Platonic form, that transcended the local community and its own particular determinations about right and wrong, useful or not, other than those basic natural laws (but these, too, were open to a good deal of “relative” interpretation). Communal welfare and justice were both the products of local political conversations, and any attempt to conflate the judgments of those independent entities had to be agreed to by them and the like associations involved in order to be legitimate. Thus the mode of operation was consensual rather than majoritarian or adversarial, which accounts for the nine-vote decision-making threshold and the provisions for unanimity with regard to amendment that marked the Articles.