JAMES MADISON: THE ISAAC NEWTON OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Lesson One: Bruce Fein

The end of government and civil society is justice, i.e, working to make everyone’s station in life correspond to their character and accomplishments, simpliciter. As President Abraham Lincoln elaborated on July 4, 1861, governments are primarily instituted, “to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”

James Madison eclipses all political thinkers and philosophers in securing justice-- a fool’s errand without peace. He is the Isaac Newton of political science. He was endowed with unique courage. He emancipated himself from the bondage of species narcissism to discern our incorrigible depravity fueled by juvenile, hormonal cravings for power, sex, wealth, fame, creature comforts, and certainty, however misplaced. As Mr. Madison elaborated in Federalist 51, men are not angels. If they were, there would be no need for government. Everyone is made of crooked timber. Good and evil are not in equipoise. Evil crushes good. The oppressed become the oppressors at the first opportunity.

At age 25, Madison commenced participating in politics and government. He rubbed shoulders with sociopaths who dominate politics everywhere. He observed that, with unimportant exceptions, every political figure acts with ulterior motives of personal aggrandizement—whether power, wealth, fame, or a combination. Politicians can never be relied upon to do the right thing for the right reason. They can be shrewdly splintered to do the right thing for the wrong reason. That wisdom gave birth to Madison’s landmark constitutional separation of powers pitting ambition against ambition—sociopaths against sociopaths. Separation of powers is not a panacea for the depravity of the species. But it is superior to all other forms of government in securing peace, justice, and liberty—the right to march to your own drummer free from domestic predation or foreign aggression.

The crown jewel of separation was Madison’s exclusive entrustment of the war power to the legislative branch, a highly risk averse talking shop that has never declared war in 235 years except in response to an actual or perceived attack on the United States. Members of Congress get nothing from war. Indeed, it diminishes their power to an inkblot. All previous dispensations endowed the executive with the war power, which yielded perpetual calamitous conflicts. The Ottoman Empire was at war every day for centuries until its collapse. The Bible recounts chronic wars by kings.

Madison explained why the executive is an untrustworthy steward of the war power in Helvidius Number 4:

“In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man: not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions, and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.”

War is the scourge of liberty and justice. In times of war the law falls silent. Liberty and justice are crucified on a bogus national security cross. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese Americans were herded into concentration camps for nearly four years resting on the Orwellian theory that because they had refrained from sabotage or espionage then treason must be afoot.

The United States silently embraced perpetual war against international terrorism after 9/11, including empowering the President to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on secret speculation that the victim might be a national security threat, i.e., the power of assassination.

During World War I, free speech in opposition to our war of aggression to expand the British and French Empires was prosecuted as criminal under the Espionage and Sedition Acts. No republic has ever survived constant warfare. Rome was an early example. And fastening responsibility for war on the legislative branch was the Madisonian genius for securing peace, the sine qua non for liberty and justice. Prime Minister William Gladstone was against the British Empire until he was for it in Egypt, India, and elsewhere. Institutional personalities, not individuals, determine war or peace. And the legislative branch on that score is a Golden Retriever, not a Rottweiler.

The craving for power for its own sake predominates among humans. It finds expression in chronic wars that disgrace the species—legalized first degree murder on a staggering scale. War has endured from time immemorial. Its grisliness is no deterrent from the juvenile ecstasy derived from killing, dominating, and enslaving others. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman correctly lamented, “War is hell.” Statesman Benjamin Franklin along the same lines noted, “There never was a good war or a bad peace.” But those admonitions have been as futile as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, delivered ironically on one of the most blood-stained places on the planet.

Among all species, humans are the greatest killers. No other species assembles members on a vast scale to perpetrate killings over concocted straws. The Greek-Trojan war was ostensibly fought over Helen of Troy. Endless wars in the Bible were purportedly fought over land and circumcision. The Crusades were allegedly fought over religion. World War I and World War II were professedly fought to make the world safe for democracy and to defend liberty and justice. But the genuine motivation for all wars—but for war in self-defense to an actual or imminent attack--has been killing, conquering, and plundering for their own sakes. Alexander the Great fits like a glove. He was clueless as to why he sought world domination through legalized first-degree murder. Napoleon was the same. It led him to perhaps the most colossal blunder in military history marching to Moscow in 1812 and retreating in winter causing hundreds of thousands of soldiers to die. The United States fought a 20-year futile war in Afghanistan costing $2.3 trillion unable to articulate a definition of victory. There is nothing new under the sun. First Rome fought to defend itself. Then it fought to defend allies. Then it invented allies to defend. Finally, Rome fought to defend its reputation for militarism until it collapsed in exhaustion.

The DNA of the species explains the propensity and ubiquity of war. The species is hormonal, not cerebral. Darwin’s Origin of Species demonstrates that every species cultivates traits though evolution towards the goal of survival for the sake of survival without moral content. Ruthless proficiency in killing others advances that goal. Critical thinking, dedication to justice, moral scruples do not. Armored knights proliferate and reproduce. The likes of Socrates who question everything and asks “why” before proceeding to “how” are as rare as unicorns. They would rather take the hemlock than lead an unexamined life.

The species exalts the warrior over the moral philosopher through monuments, obelisks, statues, poetry, romance, fairy tales, museums, battlegrounds, and history books. Sir Lancelot over King Arthur. King Agamemnon over Nestor. Shakespeare’s King Henry V over Sir Thomas More. The armored knight evokes the cheers of the crowd, the swoons of the ladies, and the adulation of youth benumbing them to the horrors of war. Abraham Lincoln, in opposing the Mexican American unconstitutional war of aggression, deplored “the exceeding brightness of miliary glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood-that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy.”

War and the insatiable lust for power flourish because they fulfill the need to distract attention from philosophically empty souls who derive infantile self-esteem by slaughtering, oppressing, or dominating others. Henry David Thoreau was right in observing, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” They are terrified of asking, “Why do I exist?” going beyond enslavement to hormonal gratifications. They are terrified of indeterminacy. They are terrified of moral responsibility. Like a blind cyclops, their self-identities pivot on dominating others by force and violence. That explains the pervasiveness of misogyny, honor killings, and the eagerness of women to emulate male enthusiasm for war. To exhibit disrespect for such beastliness commonly provokes limitless anger, revenge, or violence from fragile self-esteem.

The intellectual bondage of species narcissism prevents acknowledgement of the sordidness and depravity of human nature indispensable for architecting government to handcuff an inherent lust for war. James Madison had the unique courage among statesmen to recognize that humans are a killer species tending towards extinction without separation of powers denying the executive authority to initiate war—the apex scourge of mankind.