The nostalgia surrounding our founding fathers sometimes leads us to forget they had political disagreements, even extremely divisive ones, with each other. Alexander Hamilton wanted a strong central government, even going as far as voicing a desire to make George Washington a king. The provisions of the Constitution initially horrified many founding fathers. Some even claimed they would take up arms once more if ever the national government tried to gain the powers to tax. In fact, the Constitutional Convention would have ended in complete disgrace if James Madison hadn’t crafted the Great Compromise, which still took enormous amounts of debate and the crafting of the Federalist Papers to garner support from the people to pass.
Strong passions, robust debate, and divisive rhetoric are not new. In fact, they have been present from the beginning. Sometimes we look at the founding of our government as some grand happy event, where everyone got along, and compare that to the politics of today. This leads us to talk about how horrible it all has gotten. Really the only thing that has changed is an absent willingness to craft compromise. The primary purpose of our form of government, to create an environment where the passion of politics can wage conflict without the contest of arms, hasn’t changed. This purpose is still being accomplished.