The question of democracy

[Belsnickel]

(03-15-2018, 02:27 AM)Dill Wrote: LOL "Secret Proceedings"! Just skimmed over Hamilton's proposals for the Constitution. Very interesting to see what our branches of government looked like in formation--the executive vested in a "governor" and Congress called an "Assembly."  I'll find the elitist stuff. Thanks for that link.

The title definitely seems sketchy, but I was directed to this by a Madison scholar and I know some others in poli sci that have copies of this for research. It's a very interesting read.

(03-15-2018, 02:27 AM)Dill Wrote: I guess you could call the Federalist Papers propaganda since they were meant to persuade, but unlike what we usually call propaganda, I find a lot of the arguments world class as stand alone arguments about how power is to be managed. Madison really wrestled well with the problem of sovereignty, how to make political power internal to government (as opposed to the external, monarchical model), but checked and balanced.

I don't apply the negative connotations to the term propaganda that a lot of people do. Propaganda has a place, it just needs to be recognized for what it is. When we read propaganda it just means that we have to take into account the purpose of the writing and take that point of view in context.

Madison is an interesting one because it did not take him long to see that his intentions in the crafting of the Constitution, which established something more aristocratic than we would like to think, were highly subject to corruption. It really is interesting to see he and Jefferson at odds on the aristocratic/democratic front, but Madison eventually swayed more towards Jefferson's view later on.

I live in an area with a lot of scholars on Jefferson and Madison, so I have a lot of opportunities to go to lectures on these sorts of things. Which if you are a political science nerd is a lot of fun.