Stand Up Citizen - A Debate for the Ages

A Debate for the Ages

11/25/19 • 25 min

The Constitution is published after months of hard work, and there is lots of push back. Opposition to many of its aspects comes even from leading citizens, including Sam Adams, John Hancock, and Patrick Henry. Essays opposing the Constitution appear within only a few days after it is published for Americans to read. They are principled, thoughtful, and persuasive articles. What will those who wrote the Constitution do about this?
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay band together and write responses to all of the opposition writing, These come down to us as the Federalist Papers. Their work is relevant to our day, quoted often by courts, academics, politicians.
This episode provides a glimpse into that greatest debate, what may be the high point of the entire period of our nation's founding.

Previous Episode

Rule of Law - Constitution

Setting the stage for the creation of the Constitution, this episode gives background and context for how the framers created our Constitution. It is about the times and events that affected them, what influenced and concerned them, and some of the main challenges they wanted to handle when making the Constitution. An overview of their objectives in designing the document will I hope lead listeners to read the document and realize our good fortune.

Next Episode

The Secret of Freedom is Courage

The founders of our country are much in the news of late. Even the Federalist Papers are getting lots of air time. Let's remind ourselves that our founders tried to solve the challenge and threat of faction by encouraging a diversity of interests and views in our republic. But gerrymandered safe districts run entirely counter to the intent and design of Hamilton, Madison and the other members of our founding generation. We need to face this problem using their wisdom, consult their reasoning, and take a hard look at the risks if we don't take care of the threat of gerrymandering.