Fallacies of the Anti-Federalists in the British Empire - Essay Example

JUSTIN, BELOW ARE MY COMMENTS Fallacies of the Anti-Federalists         In our own time, it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to craft the structure of the American government.  A mostly rural culture, with only the faintest signs of political order, the early nation teetered on the brink of disunion.  The British Empire had left a sour taste in the mouths of many Americans, who had sacrificed so much to come to a place where opportunities for freedom existed, in a variety of ways, from religious to political to economic.  Too many of the former British colonists, any centralized government represented the possibility of unchecked despotism, and it was this objection that galvanized the anti-Federalist resistance.  The memory of the intrusive acts passed by Parliament made many fear that an unchecked federal government would behave in much the same fashion, swiftly casting aside its mandate to create a free land, deciding instead to establish domination over a people that had just left that sort of existence behind them.  The same men who had thrown boxes of tea into Boston Harbor could hardly be expected to accept a new government that had many of the same confiscatory tendencies as the British government had. Even worse, while London was a boat ride of many months, the new American government would be able to back up its decrees with accessible military force. For a new government to be acceptable to the anti-Federalists, it would have to be far weaker than its British counterpart.         One of the assertions of the anti-Federalists was that a “very extensive territory cannot be governed on the principles of freedom, otherwise than by a confederation of republics, possessing all the powers of internal government, but united in the management of their general, and foreign concerns” (Address and Reasons). While the British Empire covered much of the globe, it was in the initial stages of yielding its holdings to independence. Imagine how difficult it would be for a government in our own time to micromanage the affairs of such a large country – as the Soviet Union found out.  In the late 1700’s, there were not that many areas of life over which the government held sway.  The provision of roads and public order were just about all that government could guarantee its citizens.  In our own time, where government regulates such areas as public education, the insurance of bank accounts, the permitted forms of marriage, and other areas that the framers of the Constitution may never have imagined that their government would be asked to oversee. Imagine that, instead of fifty states, the United States were a looser confederation of fifty small republics, sort of like a European Union on a much larger scale.  How would one separate the “internal” matters from those of “general concern”?  Richard Samuelson wrote an article wondering whether a return to the looser, states’ rights-oriented philosophy of federalism would cure a lot of the cultural ills in the country.  Because there are several polarizing issues of an ethical nature that are occupying the federal courts’ dockets, it has been suggested that delegating more legal questions to the states to settle on their own, it has been argued, might well solve the problem for the federal government. An example he discusses is the issue of gay marriage.  If states are permitted to set their own standards as to whether or not gay marriages will be legal, what happens if a couple moves from a gay-friendly state to a more conservative one?  If the gay couple adopts a child, and one of the members runs with the child to a state where their marriage is not recognized, how would the custody dispute be handled? (Samuelson). In a looser confederation of republics, such legal situations would clearly overburden the court systems. A similarly polarizing issue that also was probably not something the framers would ever have considered something that would come under government purview is the question of abortion.  If this were an issue that were left to the states, it would be easy to imagine the different rules that would apply from state to state.  The waiting periods might well vary; the permitted trimesters for the procedure might also vary; the legality itself might make abortion quite easy for someone in Massachusetts, but might place a girl living in Wyoming thousands of miles from the nearest practitioner (Samuelson). Currently, while state law governs marriage, federal law governs abortion. However, the Congress has taken up legislation periodically (and even amendments) that would outlaw gay marriage. Clearly, the federal government feels entitled to take up that question and wrest it away from state discretion. This is a concern that would have rankled the anti-Federalists, who would have asked, and rightly so, how the question of gay marriage could be construed as a general area of interest, and therefore a matter for federal legislation. The anti-Federalists would have seen this question as one for state legislatures to figure out for themselves. The fewer incursions that the federal government made into state issues, the better, according to the anti-Federalist mindset.In our own time, there are regional differences of opinion on this and other questions. People across the South, for example, would probably be against gay marriage, given the conservative leanings of the region. In the Northeast, where there are more liberal-minded thinkers, and the conservatives tend to have more of a live-and-let-live philosophy, there might be more support for gay marriage. Even now, the states that have permitted civil unions are in the Northeast.         Now, imagine this in a confederation of republics.  Given the diversity of opinion that the questions of gay marriage and abortion arouse in public debate, one can imagine the diversity of laws that would spring up, without any sort of federal oversight.  It would be hard to justify the designation of abortion as a matter of “general” interest for the entire confederation, and so a collection of sovereign republics could come to some considerable hostilities over what many perceive to be a moral or ethical question, rather than a political one.         Also, what mechanism would ensure that the confederation could work together on foreign matters?  Currently, the American government is at odds with itself over the continuation of the Iraqi war.  The Congress, which is currently controlled by the Democratic Party, wants to rescind, or at least place limits on, the authorizations granted to the President in the 2002 resolution that set the stage for military involvement in Iraq.  As one might imagine, President Bush, who is a Republican, calls these attempts counterproductive, saying that they are attempts to tie the hands of the American military at a point in time when that military needs the most leeway possible in order to bring about a successful outcome.  Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, responded to the President’s criticism in this way:  “If someone wants to call that tying the hands instead of changing the policy, yeah -- the president needs a check and a balance.  This President hasn’t had one” (Koppel). Montesquieu wrote that a group of small republics could confederate and provide for a common defense in the case of an attack from without. According to his argument, “From confederation, there results less strength, than intimate union, but it is better than entire separation” (Tracy). The anti-Federalists would obviously agree with this, because it fit with their proper idea of the way that the new United States should join. However, one wonders how the Revolutionary War, much less the War of 1812, would have ended for the American side, had the war happened in our own time, and had the British Empire had the naval and air capacity to attack across the sea. Lord Cornwallis would have been significantly more intimidating, had a couple of aircraft carriers been lurking in the Atlantic.                In all fairness, however, the anti-Federalists made some excellent points about the flaws that were in the initial Constitution.  There were no guarantees for personal liberties, in a number of areas, that would have kept the government from overseeing any number of areas of public expression.  Ultimately, the Bill of Rights appeared as a solution to many of the problems that the anti-Federalists had with the Constitution.  The anti-Federalists also feared that the federal government would use its power of taxation to supersede the powers of the states, and more local forms of government, to raise their own funding and support their own structures.  Depending on how you look at things, this could be said to have come to pass in some ways.  The federal government passes, from time to time, legislation that mandates some sort of state-level action, but does not provide funding to the states to carry out that legislation.  These “unfunded mandates” often send state budget makers into paroxysms, wondering where they will find more revenue to cover this new requirement.         However, the anti-Federalists made an additional suggestion that would be highly impracticable.  While increasing the size of the deliberative bodies would not necessarily have been inconvenient, drastically shortening the periods between elections would have been, especially in that time period, when information took so long to travel.  In our own time, it seems like political campaigning never ends.  Even though the next election for President in the United States is not for another 20 months, there is already a lot of interest in the next election.  According to an ABC News poll, 65% of Americans claim to be following the 2008 Presidential election closely (Langer).  Even in a swifter information age, though, how effective would a faster election cycle be?  If Presidential elections were held every two years instead of four, would President Bush still be in office?  Although the Democrats had some compelling issues as the opposition party, they were not able to oust President Bush in 2004.  In the case of Representatives and Senators, would a shorter election cycle cause a higher turnover in elected officials, or would it increase the inertia of the incumbent, because there would not be enough time for new candidates to raise issues and gain publicity sufficient to unseat someone who had held the office for a decade?  If it did increase turnover, would the constant cycling of new Congressmen cause havoc, because of the learning curve needed to be in government?         In the 1780’s, there was a lot of the anti-Federalist doctrine that made sense.  Indeed, in our own time, much has happened that showed their objections to be right.  Because of the public perception that government is responsible for providing a safety net for its citizens, the government is much more expansive than its framers intended.  Because of this significant responsibility, decentralization would create even more chaos than a centralized authority engenders.  A network of republics that the anti-Federalists would require a lot more self-reliance on the part of the individual citizen than the modern citizen is prepared to take on.  The unrest that began during the 1920’s, in the throes of the Great Depression, would flare up during each time of economic uncertainty, tearing the fabric of the republics apart.  One can only guess that the slavery conflict would have done to such a confederation! Added citation: Tracy, A.L.C. A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s “Spirit of Laws.’ Trans. Thomas Jefferson. Philadelphia, William Duane, 1811. Tracy, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de (1754-1836) Title: A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws': To Which Are Annexed, Observations on the Thirty-First Book, by the late M. Condorcet: and Two Letters of Helvetius, On the Merits of the Same Work Published:  Philadelphia: William Duane. 1811, trans. Thomas Jefferson, 1811. Read More