This Needs Fixin'

OK, it took over 200 years to get to this point, but with the Supreme Court’s turn to the bogus “Unitary Executive” concept it looks like the Anti-Federalist position is being proved correct.

So, yay?

Predicting that a strong central government with inadequate formal safeguards will lead to tyranny is tricky.

We all like to be correct, and to have that demonstrated publicly, of course.

But in this case the cost of them being proved right is the destruction of the Republic.

It’s a bit of a mixed bag, then.

The Anti-Federalist position was that the nationalist designs of the Federalists would lead to:

the authority of a single national government, upper-class dominance, inadequate separation of powers, and loss of immediate control over local affairs.

• Britannica

That’s a pretty accurate description of the United States even before the coup; it’s just been getting more extreme since then.

Sounds like they nailed it.

The irony, of course, is that the Anti-Federalists tended to be:

• rural
• agricultural
• less wealthy

They supported a State with a decentralized, primarilly local, government and emphasized states over national sovereignty.

Which pretty accurately describes the coup’s base here in the 21st century.

The Anti-Federalists were also the reason we have the Bill of Rights since it was added to address their opposition to the Constitution as written, to fence in the power of the strong central government the Federalists wanted.

And the Bill of Rights is the only part of the Constitution that’s really doing anything to prevent the coup from consolidating all State power into itself.

And the regime hatessss it.

So, a bit more irony, there.

That the party, today, that most resembles the Anti-Federalist base and most vocally aligns with their ideals is also the party proving that their most dire predictions were correct.

My cup runneth over with irony.

So, as we’re dealing with the coup and whatever comes after it, it’s worth revisiting the original debate over the United States’ constitution; the obvious place to start after the text itself is:

• The Federalist Papers
• The Anti-Federalist Papers

We can look at that record and hopefully learn something as we go into the next round of the debate over how to organize this society.

Because, while they didn’t have much experience with democracies at the time, some of the folks around then did manage to predict how all this would end up. At least in general terms.

They could never have predicted Trump.

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