necessary. In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” Now, I know what you’re thinking: “No shit, James Madison.” But let me remind you that nobody had thought this crap up before. For spit balling, this was not a bad piece of work. I mean, sure, it seems that he was rather obsessed with angels,creatures of fiction much the same as faeries and unicorns, but I think he kept it under control enough to focus on the task at hand. Let’s just be thankful the Constitution doesn’t require any wee folk or thrumpins to command seats of political office. That is, as far as we know. Who can tell what the bylaws of Freemasonry demand? Not me, you silly goose, for I am not a Freemason. Don’t be ridiculous. Ahem.
Thanks largely to these efforts by the Federalist Papers’ authors, the Constitution remained alive, but the work had only just begun for James Madison. Remember that the colonies had just won their freedom from the tyranny of the tea-sipping British monarchy, and so the citizens were very nervous about the amount of power that might be afforded to this new federal government, and with good reason. I mean, we were not about to start a country in which we called the trunk of a car “the boot,” for fuck’s sake. The Bill of Rights came about as a reassurance to the people, to assuage their fears of an overweening central power by asserting their individual rights in writing. James Madison, aka “the Mad Jam,” expressed his opinion of this first set of constitutional amendments to be a “nauseous project,” but he knew that he had to get it together if he wanted the Constitution to happen. One substantial public concern was that by naming certain explicit rights of citizens, other unlisted, or “crybaby,” rights might then be limited.
These great thinkers like the Mad Jam had to take an unimaginable amount of bellyaching onboard from all sides and then hold true to their astonishing foresight. They had the Magna Carta as a starting point, sure, and they knew a lot of cool vocabulary words, I get it, but they had to combine all this knowledge, stir in a large scoop of gumption, and thereby concoct the bubbling loaf of our legalsystem, in which the people are represented directly in the legislation, and crimes would be prosecuted fairly in the judicial system. (I don’t know about you, but when I have to merely take down burrito orders for the eight of us at Offerman Woodshop, I grow befuddled and overwhelmed, and the
last
thing I can think about is making certain that everyone feels fairly represented. “Thomas, they were out of carne asada, so I got you a bag of tortilla chips and some tomatillo salsa. And half a churro. Get off my dick! Whattaya think this is, the Constitutional Convention? You don’t like churros? Why don’t you move to North Korea?!”) Therefore, the thought of equitably laying out a set of rules by which all Americans could be protected fairly equally beggars my feeble thinkin’ pan. Not only did the Mad Jam manage to accomplish this unappetizing task in the face of ambivalence and opposition; he did it all while running a campaign against his good pal James Monroe for Virginia’s seat in the first House of Representatives. In fact, it is widely held that Monroe would well have ridden his slight electoral edge to victory had it not been for the cold efficacy of Madison’s slanderous campaign slogan: “Mo’ Monroe, Mo’ Problems.”
A great deal of Sturm und Drang, not to mention blood, sweat, and phlegm, went into the initial sculpting of our governmental system. One of the most progressive aspects of the documentation detailing our newborn government, indeed possibly that decree’s most admirable attribute, is the fact that the framers of the Constitution made it fixable. To greatly simplify this
Thanks largely to these efforts by the Federalist Papers’ authors, the Constitution remained alive, but the work had only just begun for James Madison. Remember that the colonies had just won their freedom from the tyranny of the tea-sipping British monarchy, and so the citizens were very nervous about the amount of power that might be afforded to this new federal government, and with good reason. I mean, we were not about to start a country in which we called the trunk of a car “the boot,” for fuck’s sake. The Bill of Rights came about as a reassurance to the people, to assuage their fears of an overweening central power by asserting their individual rights in writing. James Madison, aka “the Mad Jam,” expressed his opinion of this first set of constitutional amendments to be a “nauseous project,” but he knew that he had to get it together if he wanted the Constitution to happen. One substantial public concern was that by naming certain explicit rights of citizens, other unlisted, or “crybaby,” rights might then be limited.
These great thinkers like the Mad Jam had to take an unimaginable amount of bellyaching onboard from all sides and then hold true to their astonishing foresight. They had the Magna Carta as a starting point, sure, and they knew a lot of cool vocabulary words, I get it, but they had to combine all this knowledge, stir in a large scoop of gumption, and thereby concoct the bubbling loaf of our legalsystem, in which the people are represented directly in the legislation, and crimes would be prosecuted fairly in the judicial system. (I don’t know about you, but when I have to merely take down burrito orders for the eight of us at Offerman Woodshop, I grow befuddled and overwhelmed, and the
last
thing I can think about is making certain that everyone feels fairly represented. “Thomas, they were out of carne asada, so I got you a bag of tortilla chips and some tomatillo salsa. And half a churro. Get off my dick! Whattaya think this is, the Constitutional Convention? You don’t like churros? Why don’t you move to North Korea?!”) Therefore, the thought of equitably laying out a set of rules by which all Americans could be protected fairly equally beggars my feeble thinkin’ pan. Not only did the Mad Jam manage to accomplish this unappetizing task in the face of ambivalence and opposition; he did it all while running a campaign against his good pal James Monroe for Virginia’s seat in the first House of Representatives. In fact, it is widely held that Monroe would well have ridden his slight electoral edge to victory had it not been for the cold efficacy of Madison’s slanderous campaign slogan: “Mo’ Monroe, Mo’ Problems.”
A great deal of Sturm und Drang, not to mention blood, sweat, and phlegm, went into the initial sculpting of our governmental system. One of the most progressive aspects of the documentation detailing our newborn government, indeed possibly that decree’s most admirable attribute, is the fact that the framers of the Constitution made it fixable. To greatly simplify this
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