Glenn Beck’s Federalist Papers contradiction

I look forward to day that Beck stops following the Walt Disney narrative of the History of the United States.

This past week, his new book company has published a “translation” of the Federalist Papers to modern language – so average people can read them without getting bored.   He really, really wants people to understand them, but completely misses the big picture (still)

Following the American Revolution, the United States was a loose confederation of the 13 English colonies.   Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and others who inspired the Revolution did not want a powerful central government – only a minimal overall structure to organize state militias to protect the country in an emergency.

The bankers and merchants didn’t like this new country created the Revolution.   It lacked a reliable currency, it didn’t have a national foreign policy to make deals with England and France.   The central government relied on the states sending money to fund the Continental Army, which they failed to do.   The government didn’t even have a executive branch or President – only a President of the Congress.  The new country was very weak, and England would be more than glad to take over again if the new country failed.

So John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton crafted a new vision for the United States of America – John Jay would head the court system, George Washington would run the Army and the Executive Branch, and Alexander Hamilton would establish the Bank of New York (the one that still exists as BNY/Mellon) into the official Bank of the United States to collect taxes and create a stable money system.  

The three of them then wrote a systematic explanation introducing their new idea for a STRONG Federal government (as in Federalist) that would have the ability to tax all of the states to back a strong central currency, and establish that the Central government would be in charge of the 13 states and have legal supremacy over them – not just a loose legal structure.

The three men published these papers under pseudonyms in influential newspapers of the day.  John Jay had been the President of the Continental Congress while the Continental Confederacy was falling apart (did he want it to fail?).   The Federalists led a media blitz that caught their opposition unprepared – Thomas Jefferson was in France, Patrick Henry was appalled, and tried to publish opinions opposing the Federalists.

The best the Anti-Federalists were able to do was to prevent ratification unless the new country adopted the Bill of Rights, which limited the power of the Federal government and limited its scope to only the enumerated powers.   The Federalists, especially Hamilton, opposed the Bill of Rights as being not necessary.

Much of what people don’t seem to like about government today – a strong government funded by central taxation, an alliance between the U.S. Treasury and a private “Federal” banking system, using the Interstate Commerce Clause to regulate almost everything, Federal mandates telling States what they must do – trace their roots back to the Federalists.   Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party would end any doubt in the 1860s that the United States was a single country governed by a strong central government, and states exist only to respond to the demands of the Federal Government.

After John Jay rushed to make a treaty with England with the idea of making a banking alliance with the Bank of England and favor England over France in matters of trade, James Madison saw the error of his ways in working with Hamilton – Madison would join with Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, James Mason, Patrick Henry, James Monroe and others to organize under the name of the Democratic Republican party to push George Washington and his allies out of power.  

As George Washington was leaving office, he spoke out against the idea that the United States might have a political party that opposed its leader.   Aaron Burr, the Vice President of the United States under Thomas Jeffeson would kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel, essentially ending the Federalist legacy.