"Neo-Federalist' and "Neo-Anti-Federalist" Perspectives on the Constitution and Democracy

At the time the Constitution was adopted, there was intense controversy between the Federalists who favored ratification and the Anti-Federalists who opposed.  Anti-Federalists attacked the Constitution as overcentralized, undemocratic and an attempt to impose an aristocracy.  That perspective has not entirely disappeared to this day.

These days there may roughly be said to be two perspectives on the adoption of the Constitution, that I would call Federalist (or perhaps neo-Federalist) and neo-Anti-Federalist; neo, because the arguments today’s neo-Anti-Federalists use to damn the original Constitution as undemocratic are not the same ones the original Anti-Federalists used.

Thes neo-Federalist viewpoint goes somewhat as follows:  The government under the Articles of Confederation was hopelessly weak and did not give the central government the power necessary to fully function.  Recognizing the need for a stronger government, a Convention was called that drew up a new Constitution.  Despite the need for a stronger government, the Framers who drew up the Constitution recognized that an unrestrained government was dangerous.  Therefore, they took appropriate precautions to restrain the government, adopting the separation of powers (legislative, executive and judicial) and a system of checks and balances to prevent an abuse of power.  The full details of the system of checks and balances are often shown in a diagram or flow chart to indicate how each branch of government can restrain the abuses of any other.

The neo-Anti-Federalist viewpoint takes a dimmer view of the process.  It begins with Shays’ Rebellion, a popular uprising by Massachusetts farmers, relentlessly squeezed by oppressive taxes and debts, facing eviction, loss of all their property (including tools and furniture) and potentially indefinite imprisonment for debt. When repeated appeals to the Massachusetts government for relief went unheard, the desperate farmers rebelled and were crushed by the Massachusetts government.  (The federal government had no authority to intervene).  It was this incident that alarmed the ruling classes and convinced them of the need for stronger central government that could suppress such rebellions in the future.  The Convention was therefore a meeting of conservative members of the ruling classes seeking to shore up their power against a growing threat of true democracy.  Their basic distrust of the common people is evidenced in three undemocratic provisions in the original form of the Constitution:

            (1)        The President is not elected by the people directly but by the Electoral College, whose members were originally elected by state legislatures instead of the people directly and were expected to use their own judgment instead of being pledged to particular candidates. 

            (2)        Under the original version of the Constitution, Senators were not elected by the people directly, but by the state legislatures (changed to the people with the Seventeenth Amendment).

            (3)        Although the House of Representatives was the only branch of the federal government elected by the people directly, they were not elected on the basis of universal suffrage, but existing state restrictions on who could vote were retained.

When I was in school, we were taught essentially a combination of these two views.  The government under the Articles of Confederation, it is acknowledged, was hopelessly weak.  After describing that weakness in some detail, my school books then switched to Shays’ Rebellion and said that the primary motive in calling the Convention was to give the federal government authority to intervene and suppress future such rebellions.  The books described the delegates both as fearing too strong a central government and therefore instituting checks and balances (carefully diagramed) and as fearing the people and therefore instituting the aristocratic features of the Electoral College, election of Senators by state legislatures, and state restrictions on the vote.  In the debate on ratification, Federalists tend to be portrayed as aristocrats and Anti-Federalists as democrats.  The adoption of the Constitution is portrayed as our national fall from grace.  But the story of our redemption follows, as the Anti-Federalists were able to pressure the Federalists into adopting a Bill of Rights (something not included in the Constitution as originally adopted) and so we were saved from an aristocracy.

Ultimately, the attempt to combine these two viewpoints makes no sense.  If the Constitution was truly aristocratic because of the Electoral College, state election of Senators and state restrictions on the vote, the Bill of Rights should not make it democratic because it does not alter any of these features.  At best, it simply transforms our Constitution from an absolute aristocracy to a limited aristocracy.

My goal in the succeeding blog posts is to set aside the neo- view points and try to understand the Constitution as it might have looked in the 18th Century.  But to do so I must begin by conceding at least one point to the neo-Anti-Federalist.  That will be addressed in my next post.