The Federalists advocated a strong central government while the Anti-Federalists advocated state governments. The former feared that division would lead to fighting and instability. The latter feared that centralized power would lead to the kind of totalitarianism that the American Revolutionaries had just victoriously opposed in the War for Independence. This paper will describe why I would align myself with the Anti-Federalists because of their aversion for centralized power.
The difference between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists was all about what kind of government the United States would have. The Federalists wanted to ratify… Continue Reading...
because it dictated the type of government we would have. The Federalists, led by Hamilton, wanted a strong central government. The Anti-Federalists wanted every state to be its own government. The guiding question of this essay is: Should the U.S. have ratified the Constitution or stayed a loose confederation? This paper will show why the U.S. was better off not ratifying the Constitution and remaining a loose confederation of states.
An interesting article at Mises Institute by Gary Galles argued that history has proven that the Anti-Federalists were right in their fears of what would happen should a central government be founded. As Galles notes, the Anti-Federalists… Continue Reading...
Hamilton acted on their passionate beliefs in a strong central government. Hamilton is known most of all for his Federalist Papers, a collection of documents co-authored by John Jay and James Madison, that extolled the virtues of creating and maintaining a strong central government. States’ rights advocates feared that a strong central government would become dangerously close to the strong central government in England, and believed that a strong central government could too easily become tyrannical. However, Washington, Hamilton, and Franklin all recognized that too much fragmentation and bickering among the states would be even worse and might… Continue Reading...
would have. The Federalists, led by Hamilton, wanted a strong central government. The Anti-Federalists wanted every state to be its own government. The guiding question for me is: Should the U.S. have ratified the Constitution or stayed a loose confederation?
I found most of my research online, using Google to help me with my web browsing. For primary sources, I was able to locate all the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers at Constitution.org and Yale.edu. This gave me a sense of what the actual debate was about at the time. For modern day perspective, I found an interesting article at… Continue Reading...
libertarians and liberals, or Democrats, is that the latter supports a strong central government whereas the Libertarian Party is categorically opposed not just to government interference in personal lives but also opposed to federal taxes and other boated “big government” structures and institutions (Libertarian Party, 2018). The Republican Party seemed at one point to be veering towards libertarianism in its rhetoric against big government, but has turned towards social conservatism. As a result, the Republican Party now supports government intrusion in the personal lives of individuals while denying the rights of some citizens to have access to essential services: which is… Continue Reading...
