A Timely History Lesson

Adam's Apple

Senior Member
Apr 25, 2004
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Return of the Anti-Federalists
By Paul Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
January 12, 2006

...a few veterans of the Revolution gathered to address the crisis: Washington, Hamilton, Madison, John Jay . . . they would become the leaders of the federalist movement. They met, they planned and they enlisted others in their cause, which was to reinvigorate the American union and so save it. They set out not so much to reform the old, impotent Articles of Confederation but to replace them — with a new, federal government able to provide liberty and order. They understood that one without the other was meaningless.

Theirs was one of the most daring and in the end successful cabals in American history. These founders weren't out to restore the kind of monarchy that Americans had just overthrown, though they were accused of trying to do just that by their critics, but to reinvigorate the authority and power of a free government. (Today they might be called neo-conservatives.)

Perhaps the gravest defect of the Articles of Confederation was the lack of an executive power strong enough to keep the country secure — one of many weaknesses addressed by the historic Constitutional Convention of 1787.

When it came time to sell that new constitution to their fellow Americans through a series of newspaper articles, Alexander Hamilton would remind his countrymen, in Federalist Paper No. 70: "Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks . . . ."

for full article:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg011206.asp
 

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