Perspectives from FSF Scholars May 2, 2023 Vol. 19, No. 15

Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.” I suggested that in our time of deep societal divisions, restoring America in a way that promotes the public good and preserves our deliberative democracy might well depend upon recovering a sense of Madisonian republican virtue. [...] However consequential we may imagine the choices before the American people in 2024, in no way do they compare in gravity to the singular choice confronting the colonists in 1787: whether the Constitution adopted in Philadelphia in September 1787 should be ratified by the people’s representatives. [...] Recall that the individual Federalist essays, published serially primarily in two New York newspapers, the Independent Journal and the New York Packet, had as their sole objective persuading the American people to support the proposed Constitution. [...] At the outset he memorably framed the momentous question this way: “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their p. [...] The views expressed in this Perspectives do not necessarily reflect the views of others on the staff of the Free State Foundation or those affiliated with it.