Contradictions With Our Founding Documents

I always find the topic of factions in the Federalist Paper no. 10 very interesting. Written only 11 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it shows a distinct fear of an uprising against the newly formed government. This fear was so great that the time was taken to write an entire paper on how to quash any kind of faction despite size or type

When the Declaration of Independence was written, our country was, itself, a faction of people escaping the tyranny of England. We listed our grievances against the King and created our own, new society. Yet we found ourselves, a short 11 years later, fearing that the same thing would happen within our new and great nation. We were still too young of a country to trust ourselves and our new government and values.

You would think that 240 years later, we would’ve fully found our voice as a nation, yet here we are, in this time of political mayhem, fearing factions (#BlackLivesMatter, for example) as if they aren’t the reason we became a country. Federalists were the people who truly supported the Constitution, yet doesn’t the muting of factions directly contradict the first amendment in the Bill of Rights? Perhaps there are a great many more contradictions to be found within our country and within our presidential candidates. Where do building a wall and evading the law come into an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” our Constitution?

Then again, haven’t we always found ourselves, as a country, in contradiction with our founding documents: writing “We The People” to include only the white male elite?

Declaration of Independence

The Federalist Papers, No. 10.

U.S. Constitution. Art. II, Sec. 7.

18 thoughts on “Contradictions With Our Founding Documents”

Thanks for your post. You have a really clear and compelling tone to your prose, which is great. I have two comments. 1) In addition to giving a summary of the reading, your post needs to include a discussion of some part of the assigned text and some part of a contemporary text (which you will also cite, quote from, and describe in your post). 2) I am not sure that factions are quite the same thing as an uprising. The Federalist papers are not necessarily in response to the Declaration of Independence. They are written to support the U.S. Constitution, which especially with the Bill of Rights is more explicit about preserving the people’s right to question government and/or should the government be found to persistently violate the rights as enumerated in the constitution to overthrow that government and establish a new one according to the natural rights. I think you are getting at something very important about the early (and continuing) concern regarding factions, but you need to push further. I think some more nuanced attention to word choice and definitions might help. Some questions to ask: What is a faction? How is it different from a colony (you stated that the colonies were once factions)? How is the relationship between factions, revolutionaries, and tyrants?

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