Federalist PAPERS

What Hacker News says

1. aaron-leboAug 2018
   You said it yourself in another post: they were just copying the British.

   The Virginians, that aristocratic lot, would have and did prefer features like the Senate, which would have provided a counterweight to the more radical House. It's that way even today.

   I can't speak further to the historical context, but everything I've read about federation/modern/consensus democracies suggest that bicameralism is a benefit (ex http://wikisum.com/w/Lijphart:_Patterns_of_democracy).

   Again, that's not saying that's what they were considering then, but also read some of the Federalist Papers (Madison in particular) and how much they were weighing factions/balance of power into some of these solutions.

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2. mkempeApr 2018
   We already have the National Guard [1] --aka militias-- which provide ample check from the State level against a would-be dictatorship at the Federal level. For further self-education, one may want to read The Federalist Papers, in particular no 46 written by Madison (see [2] for a discussion of the issue).

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_S...

   [2] http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/21/the-advantage-of-being...

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3. bogomipzApr 2018
   Perhaps read the hyphenated adjective "big-moneyed" that precedes the term special-interest in my comment. The NRA, Planned Parenthood and the AFL-CIO all make 10's of millions of dollars in direct campaign contributions[1][2][3].

   This is not at all the same as what the framers had in mind with the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances” in the First Amendment. Big-moneyed special interest and influence was specifically something that James Madison was concerned about. I recommend reading "The Federalist Papers."

   [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000059...

   [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobby.php?id=d000000088

   [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082

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4. paganelFeb 2018
   > Teaching a Romanian immigrant, or a refugee from the middle east that it's completely safe to trust others is extremely hard

   Am Romanian, reading how the author was robbed on the bus because he had the invalid impression that because it was a Danish bus there would be no thieves in it almost made me start out laughing. One of the first reflexes I developed when I moved to Bucharest as a freshman student almost 20 years ago was to always check my back-pocket for my wallet (and later my front-left pocket for the phone). I still do that gesture up to the present day. I could also tell you how about 10-12 years ago a woman tried to convince me, my ex-wife and my ex-MIL that her son was badly injured in a Bucharest hospital, about to die, and that she needed some money in that very moment, she was crying out in the middle of the street just in front of us. My ex-wife would have given said lady money, but something seemed suspicious to both me and to my ex-MIL and we didn't. We returned to the same area about 15-20 minutes later and said women was still in the same place, this time not crying, calm, waiting for another "victim" to pick.

   Not trusting people by default is not bad, it's an evolutionary trait that has helped us as a social species over the millennia. I'm just reading a wonderful book that it's based on not trusting people and which, nevertheless, has had an immense positive influence, I'm talking about the collection of articles called "The Federalist Papers" by Madison, Hamilton and Jay.

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5. lwhalenJun 2016
   The article brought up one dissenting judge's opinion, and a whole lot of sour grapes at 'losing' the Heller case.

   From the Oxford English Dictionary, and bracketed in the time of the writing of the 2nd amendment:

       1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations."
   
       1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world."
   
       1812: "The equation of time ... is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."
   
       1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor."
   
       1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding."
   
       1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city."
   

   The phrase "well-regulated" was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people's arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.

   Read the Federalist Papers (specifically #46), in which Hamilton, Madison, etc, give significant insight into the intent behind the Amendments. It is plain that they intended the 2nd Amendment to not restrict the people's ability to own firearms in any way, shape, or form.

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6. anigbrowlJun 2013
   A fantastic find. If you read the Federalist Papers, it quickly becomes clear that the founders were not so much wide-eyed idealists as many Constitution-thumpers would have it, but a fairly cynical bunch who were as worried about the inability of people to rule themselves as they were about being ruled poorly from afar. Reading the FP made me quite a fan of Alexander Hamilton, hence my sometimes-grumpy statist position.
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