(pay wall removed)Centinel 1-The Anti-Federalist Paper

This is a repost of the original without the paywall.        

         Centinel 1 is the first Anti-Federalist paper written by Samuel Bryan (most likely). The paper was written as a retort to Federalist papers 10 and 51. The intent of this paper was to refute Madison’s desire to create a “republican” form of government. The basic premise is simple. If all persons were equal in wealth and property, Federalism would be a perfect system because the representatives would be “of the citizenry”. The argument though is that these equalities are not in fact present. What that creates is an oligarchy. The wealthy will use the power afforded to them by centralized government to enrich themselves and not represent the Americans and citizens of their state. 

                Let’s set aside the fact that this is obviously the system we have now. The rich literally run for office, win, and then sit in DC and collect a six figure income. There is also an argument in this paper that the three branches of government create a confusing system that dissuades the average person from taking part in this new “representative government”. The average person would not know which branch to blame when something goes wrong. For over a century Americans schooled their own children. This idea made sense. If the parent did not understand something, how could they teach the children? As time passed on I find that this concern was probably less and less of an issue. Not so fast though. Have you asked your friends about how our Federal Government works? Do they understand how a bill is made? Does the legislative process make any sense to the average American? One could say this prediction came true on accident, or is a result of government purposely taking on the monopoly of education through the Department of Education. I’ll leave that for you to decide, but the fact is few people understand how the government works and more don’t even care. 

          There was fear that the judiciary would over rule the State legislatures. I think we can safely claim this fear as being absolutely true. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on the law being overturned on a case by case basis and I'm gonna try to keep this blog simple. 

                The side effect of all of these predictions would be an aristocratic class, or caste system, where our representatives would be pulled not from the citizenry but from the higher rungs of society. This fear led to the Seventeenth Amendment, which altered the constitution so that Senators were directly elected rather than selected by state Governors. The question of whether or not this solved anything is open for interpretation, but it significantly reduced the power of the State in regards to the Federal Government by giving both chambers of congress to a popularity contest. 

                In conclusion angst of a class system similar to that which they just broke free from and a form of government that could easily become rife with corruption from the “upper class” seemed a natural conclusion to the proposed new form of Republicanism. I think if you spend any time listening to the news, listening to opinion pundits, and going to less conventional media, it seems to me, in my humble opinion that every fear of Centinel 1 has in fact come true. As I break down more Anti-Federalist papers I think this pattern will become apparent. 

In Liberty