were limited. Imagine, if you can, what the arguments over constitutional winners and losers would have looked like in a hypermediated age like ours. Perhaps all of the norms that support the Constitution were easier to respect and observe when there were not multiple channels calling for them to be bent or broken to serve the ends of different players.
In Your Own Words
Evaluate the narratives told about the founding of the United States.
Let’s Revisit: What’s at Stake . . . ?
Having read the history of revolutionary America, what would you say is at stake in the modern militia movement? The existence of state militias and similar groups poses a troubling dilemma for the federal government; and groups whose members are mostly benign, like the Tea Partiers, are even trickier for the government to deal with. Bill Clinton, who was president when Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, warned at the time of the fifteenth anniversary of those attacks that “there can be real consequences when what you say animates people who do things you would never do.” Angry rhetoric and narratives that justify that anger can result in violence that those who goad the anger might not necessarily endorse. The violence at Trump rallies in 2016 was a case in point, and there are those out there, like McVeigh and the Bundys, who “were profoundly alienated, disconnected people who bought into this militant antigovernment line.”27
The dilemma is that, on the one hand, the purpose of government is to protect our rights, and the Constitution surely guarantees Americans freedom of speech and assembly. On the other hand, government must hold the monopoly on the legitimate use of force in society or it will fall, just as the British government fell to the American colonies. If groups are allowed to amass weapons and forcibly resist or even attack U.S. law enforcers, then they constitute “mini-governments,” or competing centers of authority, and life for citizens becomes chaotic and dangerous.
The American system was designed to be relatively responsive to the wishes of the American public. Citizens can get involved; they can vote, run for office, change the laws, and amend the Constitution. By permitting these legitimate ways of affecting American politics, the founders hoped to prevent the rise of groups, like the Bundys, that would promote and act toward violence. The founders intended to create a society characterized by political stability, not by revolution, which is why Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is so careful to point out that revolutions should occur only when there is no alternative course of action.
Some militia members reject the idea of working through the system; they say, as did McVeigh, that they consider themselves at war with the federal government. We call disregard for the law at the individual level “crime,” at the group level “terrorism” or “insurrection,” and at the majority level “revolution.” It is the job of any government worth its salt to prevent all three kinds of activities. Thus it is not the existence or the beliefs of the militia groups that government seeks to control but rather their activities.
What’s at stake in challenges to the legitimacy of government are the very issues of government authority and the rights of individual citizens. It is difficult to draw the line between the protection of individual rights and the exercise of government authority. In a democracy, we want to respect the rights of all citizens, but this respect can be thwarted when a small number of individuals reject the rules of the game agreed on by the vast majority.
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Review
The Split From England
The battle for America involved a number of groups, including Native Americans, and Spanish, French, and British colonists. By the time the British won the French and Indian War (51) to secure the colonists’ defense, the colonists, already chafing under British rule, felt secure enough to sever the ties that bound them to the mother country, starting the Revolution and then in 1776 issuing the Declaration of Independence (54). Although that document proclaimed the equality of “all men,” the American founders clearly did not include African Americans, Native Americans, or women in that category.
The Articles of Confederation
Charged with creating a constitution (56), the founders drew up the Articles of Confederation (56), establishing a confederation (57) of sovereign states. The new government wasn’t strong enough to provide political stability in the face of popular discontent, however. Worried about popular tyranny (59), which they saw threatened in actions like Shays’s Rebellion (59), the political elite called for a new constitution.
The Constitutional Convention
At the Constitutional Convention (59) in 1787, the founders rejected a confederal system in favor of federalism (60), giving the central government and the states each some power of their own. Those who endorsed this political innovation were known as the Federalists (60), and those who opposed it, the Anti-Federalists (60). Federalists supported a strong central government in which representation was determined by population—a plan, called the Virginia Plan (64), favored by the large states. The Anti-Federalists, suspicious of centralized power, favored the New Jersey Plan (64), which limited power and gave each state equal congressional representation regardless of its size. These issues were resolved in the Great Compromise (64), which created a bicameral legislature, basing representation on population in one house and on equality in the other. The other major conflict among the founders, over how slaves were to be counted for purposes of representation, was resolved by the Three-fifths Compromise (65).
The Constitution
The new Constitution was based on separation of powers (70) and checks and balances (70), keeping the legislature (66), the executive (67), and the judiciary distinct but allowing each some power over the others. The independence of the branches and the checks between them were enhanced by such institutions as the bicameral legislature (66), the Electoral College (68), judicial power (69), and the practice of judicial review (69), though the latter are not mentioned explicitly in the Constitution. The founders provided for amendability (72), should circumstances require that the Constitution be changed in the future.
Ratification
The Federalists and the Anti-Federalists waged a battle over ratification (73) of the new Constitution, with the former setting out their case in a series of newspaper editorials known today as The Federalist Papers (74). In the most famous of these essays, James Madison argued that the new republic would be well able to handle the danger of factions (75), and in another, Alexander Hamilton argued that it would be dangerous to add a Bill of Rights (75) to the document. Hamilton ultimately lost the argument, and the Bill of Rights was the price the Anti- Federalists demanded for their agreement to ratify the Constitution.
Descriptions
