Slaves to Faction

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“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

James Madison

Break it down, nerds. 

If not, we will know how it feels to be thick as a brick. 

So I had a nice two-week travel break, thanks. 

I got to see the kids. I got to visit one of the oldest lighthouses in United States -- Beavertail. I also got to revisit a "road not taken" by taking pictures at the gate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis. 

And last but not least, I found another topic that interests me.

These next few weeks, I will talk about the heavy conflicts in the political realm, circa 2022. Social life is so fractured, yet, it isn't as if great minds haven't thought of these social problems before. It may be good to review the major ideas -- what did primary authors of our Constitution say? What actually is the best way to structure a form of government that acknowledges, accounts for, and deals with, the problem of factions and factionalism? 

Madison 's epic argument is presented in the pages of Federalist #10, 

There is a lot to unpack here.

I try to make the complex understandable, but that is no guarantee that I won't be subject to criticism. Bring it on. Some old guy on the internet will not help restore populist fervor to preserve, protect, and defend constitutional principles that were reduced to writing back in 1789. 

JUST KNOW THIS: I am not a Russian disinformation agent.

Now, if you truly believe that words used in the late18th Century carry a substantively different meaning than today, even though they are being used in the exact same context, or if you actually think that the Constitution of the United States of America is some cultish "code" for white supremacy, then for the sake of your mental health, you should probably just go away. Please, politely, go away. Your mind is incapable of processing complex solutions to timeless questions about human society, presented rationally, that have been pondered by wise and gifted minds over the years.  If you don't think we humans have lived -- for centuries -- at war against monarchic and oligarchic oppression, you are quite simply out of your element for this content. You need to connect more dots, especially the ones staring you in the face and biting you in the ass, trying to enslave you.

So many poor lost souls have been deceived, and I suspect it is because of the fake term "higher education." Too many young skulls full of mush are misled to think meaning is determined under the "Humpty Dumpty Theory of Language, i.e., words mean whatever their user wants them to mean. 

That maybe okay for academic purposes, but the difference between objective communication standards ("words mean things") and subjective social expression ("words only mean what I say they mean") is essentially the same difference between coitus and masturbation. 

You feel great at the end, but with the latter, nobody can relate to how you got there. 

Let's find out how we got here. Let's examine how we (Americans) should deal with factions. 

Stay tuned.

 

 © 2022 by Roy Santonil