that republics had to be small, the founders countered
that the very smallness of prior republics all but
guaranteed their failure. In small republics, the majority
can more easily organize itself into a dominant faction;
in large republics, interests become too numerous for
any single faction to dominate.
The inherent or potential partisan unwisdom of a
dominant faction also would be tempered by
representative government. Rather than the people
acting as a body, the people would instead select
officeholders to represent them. This would
refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through
the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may
best discern the true interest of their country, and whose
patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it
to temporary or partial considerations. [Federalist 10]
And the separation of powers would work in concert
with the principle of representation by incentivizing
individual officeholders to identify their personal
interests with the powers and prerogatives of their
offices, and thus keep them alert to the danger of
encroachments from other branches and offices.
The founders asserted that these innovations, and
others, combined to create a republicanism that was at
once old as well as new: true to the eternal principles
and timeless ends of good government, but awake to
and corrective of the deficiencies in prior examples of
popular rule.
One important feature of our written
constitution is the careful way that it limits
the powers of each branch of government—
that is, states what those branches may do,
and by implication what they may not do.
This is the real meaning of “limited
government”: not that the government’s
size or funding levels remain small, but that
government’s powers and activities must
remain limited to certain carefully defined
areas and responsibilities as guarded by
bicameralism, federalism, and the separation
of powers.
The Constitution was intended to endure.
But because the founders well knew that no
document written by human beings could ever be
perfect or anticipate every future contingency, they
provided for a process to amend the document—but
only by popular decision-making and not by ordinary
legislation or judicial decree.
The first ten amendments, which would come to be
known as the Bill of Rights, were included at the
demand of those especially concerned about vesting the
federal government with too much power and who
wanted an enumeration of specific rights that the new
government lawfully could not transgress. But all
agreed that substantive rights are not granted by
government; any just government exists only to secure
these rights. And they specifically noted in the Ninth
Amendment that the Bill of Rights was a selective and
not an exclusive list; that is, the mere fact that a right is
not mentioned in the Bill of Rights is neither proof nor
evidence that it does not exist.
It is important to note the founders’ understanding of
three of these rights that are decisive for republican
government and the success of the founders’ project.
Our first freedom, religious liberty, is foremost a moral
requirement of the natural freedom of the human mind.
As discussed in Appendix II, it is also the indispensable
solution to the political-religious problem that emerged
in the modern world. Faith is both a matter of private
conscience and public import, which is why the
founders encouraged religious free exercise but barred
the government from establishing any one national
Freedom is never more than one generation away
from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in
the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected,
and handed on for them to do the same, or one day
we will spend our sunset years telling our children
and our children's children what it was once like in
the United States where men were free.
Ronald Reagan