Old, Bad Arguments

The "new right" isn't peddling anything new.

Federalist 9 and 10 (Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com / Law & Liberty)

Sorry to pepper your inboxes with more James Madison quotes, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

In Federalist No. 10, Madison wrote: “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.”

As I argue in a piece in The Dispatch this morning, this was—and still is—a revolutionary recognition on the part of Madison and the other Founders: Human disagreement is an inevitability. One of the fundamental questions of politics and government is how to deal with it: (1) Let it flourish without inducing social or political breakdown, or (2) try to tamp it down artificially with the power of the state?

Madison, et al. opted for Option 1, but many on the progressive left and “new right” today are hankering for Option 2.

Click here to read my take on why they’re wrong and why (shock) Madison is right. The short of it: “The burning desire to legislate ‘the Good’ from on high and to do so now is quintessentially human; what is American, and revolutionary, is exercising the wisdom to constrain it.”