The Accidental Constitution

[watertank]

I know way too little about American history.

Constitutional Convention is in some sense a coupe de tat, replace the Articles of Confederation altogether. Charles Beard's interpretation: somewhat malevolent conspiracy. Polling people at the time, no sense of national identity. What we create is the first large-scale republic in world history. Republics were small Swiss cantons or Greek city states. Presumed that a republic couldn't work over a large land mass. Consolidated republic. How did Madison make the case? He knows he's going to have to meet that historical argument. Goes on a cram session of classics and ancient history. Reads Adam Smith, David Hume; articulates argument in the Convention itself as well as in Federalist Papers. Instead of seeing size and scale as a problem or weakness, it is an asset or strength: if you increase the size of a republic, you increase the number of interest groups or factions, which will eventually cancel out one another, much in the way that the market place of Adam Smith is a series of competing interest groups that increases productivity.

The founding fathers not only appreciated the beauty of political deadlock, they built it directly into the system!

Podcast, transcript, and etc. here
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/09/ellis_on_americ.html