Normally in my circle of office mates, the conversations that fill up the large gaps between actual engineering work consists of sports or movies or food, but with the recent presidential election there has been a lot of chatter about politics. In a recent discussion my immediate supervisor asked me where I kept my copy of the Constitution so he could prove one point or another. I replied that I didn’t have one, but could Google him up one if he desired. He said, “Never mind, I’ll go get mine.” “You have one?” I asked. He said sure, it is in the back of my copy of The Federalist Papers.
Now I’m sure I must have learned about these papers somewhere in my admittedly dodgy educational experience, but couldn’t come up with what they were. He came back and handed me a normal sized paperback, that seemed substantially weighty (like Krispy Kreme doughnuts) and was full of 85 letters to the editor sort of essays, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison & John Jay in 1787-78 to explain the need for and explain why the state of New York should ratify the proposed Constitution.
To say that deficiencies may be provided for by requisitions upon the States, is on the one hand to acknowledge that this system cannot be depended upon, and on the other hand to depend upon it for every thing beyond a certain limit. Those who have carefully attended to its vices and deformities as they have been exhibited by experience or delineated in the course of these papers, must feel invincible repugnancy to trusting the national interests in any degree to its operation. Its inevitable tendency, whenever it is brought into activity, must be to enfeeble the Union, and sow the seeds of discord and contention between the federal head and its members, and between the members themselves.
That is but a small excerpt from #30, Concerning the General Power of Taxation, and now I can see why the book felt so heavy.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 32
Several years ago, I bought The Federalist papers and the Anti-Federalist papers. I made it all the way through the first book and 1/2 way through the second. It gives you a good idea why our constitution works the way it does.