Political Philosophy and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

Political Philosophy and Thomas Jefferson and James MadisonBoth Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers about the fear of treason as they argued for the right of the people to decide who would represent them in Congress. The Federalist Papers contained both pieces of historical and legal reasoning that were originally written by these two men. Jefferson's famous quote, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' was written before the Federalist Papers was written.The Electoral College has long been criticized as a corrupt or Republican form of government. As written in the Federalist Papers, as well as the electoral college itself, states that elect electors with a plurality would elect whoever was the most popular. There was no way of stopping a rogue elector from undermining the entire system. A rogue elector could elect anyone in the electoral college, and it would take a constitutional amendment to prevent it.Article II of the Constitution was written to allow the Supreme Court to appoint one justice to serve for life and ensure that no other person could appoint a second justice. It is unclear why the Electoral College system was not used at the time. Since there was no requirement that electors would be appointed by the people in those days, it would be fair to say that the Electoral College did not prevent the Electoral College from being a corrupt institution in its own right.In order to understand the fear of treason that influenced the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, it is important to understand how political philosophy can be so directly affected by history. In the case of the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote in the introduction that he wrote to 'an obscure friend' and wanted to propose a piece on the Electoral College. He says that he had read somewhere that the Federalists wanted to have representatives in Congress elected from states, while others believed that the nation should be represented directly by the people.The Electoral College issue is what caused the entire political philosophy of political philosophy to be so heavily influenced by the issues of the election process and how the people themselves decide. It was all leading up to the Declaration of Independence, which was written in part to 'declare the emergency; --that the people have a right to alter or reform their government & to initiate it by a convention.' The meaning of the phrase, 'the people' would become important later in the Declaration of Independence when Thomas Jefferson said, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'The same philosophy of the people leading the government would be used throughout the Revolutionary War and what was happening in America. Though many American citizens were unhappy with the way their government was being run, it would still be the people who ultimately decided the direction of their country.If you take the Declaration of Independence as a philosophical work of political philosophy, you see that it is an attempt to find a middle ground between the idea of being ruled by the king and being ruled by the people. Unfortunately, much of the middle ground, such as the elections in the Federalist Papers, was removed from the Declaration of Independence in the ratification of the Constitution. Jefferson, though he wrote in the Federalist Papers, as well as the electoral college, that a strong central government was needed to protect the rights of the people, would still be writing in the Declaration of Independence and later on in the Declaration of Independence when he said, 'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.'The Declaration of Independence did not leave much room for political philosophy, since the only people they were trying to protect were the British. This problem remains with our constitution today, as the House of Representatives is actually the same people who decide our government every year. You can't blame Jefferson and Madison for wanting to save democracy and the entire principle of the Declaration of Independence if this is the way our system works.