Blog 7 - Federalist Paper #10

The federalist papers are actually quite interesting. My favorite federalist paper (out of the ones we read) was the tenth federalist paper. The question of how to dissolve factions has always intrigued me, as well as it has interested elementary school teachers. Factions have always caused problems in governments over history. What I find is the best about these papers is that the Alexander Hamilton realizes that a government cannot do away with factions without doing away with the liberties that the people of the United States of America are promised. The governments that have gotten away with most factions are dictatorships and even then they still face opposition. It is impossible to make everyone have the same beliefs. Even in our own Mormon religion we know that everyone will not share the same beliefs in the end. Even though many people will be converted to Mormonism in the end there is still Satan and the sons of perdition that will be of a different fraction. Because of this and some historical examples of factions not succeeding (such as factions fighting internally against the Nazis, Mussolini, Communists, etc) I think that it is impossible to not factions in a society. All of the governments I wrote above tried to make a utopian society and all of them failed. Alexander Hamilton and all of the founding fathers knew that utopian societies wouldn’t work. They didn’t even try to make a utopian society because they knew it was impossible. That is what I find is so magnificent about the founding fathers is that they did were realistic and did not try to reach the unimaginable, however, they knew they were going to do something that had never been done before. Besides removing liberty and making everyone the same Alexander Hamilton though of another extremist measures to remove factions; these being making an enlightened statesmen aka a dictator. I mentioned some dictators in the governments before. Dictators cant be trusted to make decisions when they are given so much power and when they wield so much influence over the people. Alexander Hamilton also knows that it is hard to find an enlightened statesman that is smart enough to lead a new nation like the United States of America. It is hard to find someone with all of the necessary skills that will not eventually corrupt and cease to be a democratic republic. Another big part of the tenth federalist paper is the when Alexander Hamilton challenges the idea that smaller republics are better then larger republic. This belief came to pass because older republics thought that to have a successful government that there needed to a majority that supported all of the same ideals and the citizens all needed to somewhat know each other. The founding fathers knew that a bigger government is better if it is not a true democracy. The founding fathers knew that tyranny of the majority was a big issue and that in a true democracy it would rule over the government. That is why the founding fathers did not do a true democracy and did a republic like they did and that which stands today, an enlarged democratic republic. In an enlarged democratic republic there can be tyranny of the majority, however, there can also be tyranny of the minority. That is what is so great about the United States of America. Alexander Hamilton and the other writers of the federalist papers (John Jay and James Madison) knew that factions were going to stay in the government and that America was a big republic and was just going to get bigger and bigger. That is why they decided to make a democratic republic and let the factions remain in the United States of America.