Factions Today
November 19, 2009 byjamielit
After reading and discussing the Federalist Papers, I couldn’t help but consider more about the concept of factions. In Federalist #10, Madison argues that a strong, well-constructed union will be able to control the violence of factions. I then began to wonder what would constitute a faction today? Madison defined a faction as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” (Wooton, 546). In section, we discussed how a faction could be a special interest group or really any group of people with a common agenda.
Madison argues that the only way to control factions is by removing their cause or controlling their effects. He proposed that the most common source of factions is the unequal distribution of property. Another one of his arguments was that if a faction is less than a majority, voting can defeat it. A final argument made was that the influence of factions might incite awareness within its own state, but will not cross the borders of that state. Looking at two specific examples, I want to argue that Madison’s arguments no longer apply to factions today.
One example I want to look at is the Abolition Movement. One aspect that Madison did not take into account was warfare and its effects. Madison’s main argument was that a strong union would be able to control factions. In this case, he was very wrong. The abolition movement showed the weakness of the union if anything. Madison also believed that factions would exist only within a state and would not be able to spread throughout the country. Almost the entire North of the U.S. and many people in the South joined the Abolition Movement. However, we can question Madison’s argument about property being the source of factions. Slaves were considered property back then and this was one of the reasons for the foundation of the Abolition Movement.
Another more modern example is the Neo Nazism movement. The American Nazi Partyattains high-profile coverage in the press through their public demonstrations. Madison’s argument about removing a faction’s cause and controlling its effects is not so easy to apply here. If we could remove the causes of racism, it would have been done already. This movement has definitely spread across state lines; I think most people around the world can identify Neo Nazism. Madison also said that if a faction is a minority, voting could easily defeat it. This is not the case today with this movement. In the Skokie Affair, which occurred in a Jewish suburb in Chicago, people went to the Supreme Court to fight the march. The court ended up ruling that the neo-Nazis were allowed to stage a series of demonstrations in Chicago.
A critical point to remember is that factions today are not what they were in 1787 when Hamilton wrote Federalist #10. Not all factions are seen as violent today; some of them include MADD, Christian Coalition, and the NAACP. Today, technology has made it much easier for people to get their opinions out through the use of the media, including the Internet, TV, and newspapers. While I don’t think Madison’s arguments apply to factions today, it’s interesting to see that a few of his points may still be valid hundreds of years later.
Bibliography
1. Federalist Paper #10 Madison “The Same Subject Continued.”