Summary of Charles Beards "Framing the Constitution. Essay

This document lessened some of those issues and attempted to accommodate the requests of all states. However, Elitist framers manipulated the idea of a constitution in order to protect their economic interests and the interests of their fellow white land and slave owning men' by restricting the voices of women, slaves, indentured servants and others.

The founding Fathers also tried to make the representation equal in the two houses of legislature. However, the makeup of the senate doesn’t agree with this because large states and small states had the same amount of representation rather than the house that has representatives equal to the ratio of the people. While John P. Roche gave his argument that the founding Fathers were best suited for their position, he never gave concrete evidence to support his statement. On the contrary, Howard Zinn gives his opinion that the founding Fathers were not democratic reformers; rather, they were making decisions that protected their power.

Moving on, Dahl explained that not only did ignorance hinder the Framers plans for a constitution but there were also limited on opportunities in that time period. One of these limits was the fact they were convinced that creating a republic was the only way to go. They surely couldn't purpose a monarchy or a government based on a hierarchy since they originally wanted to get away from the English monarch. A second limit was the existence of only thirteen states, which would complicate creating a central government. The delegates also had to confront several other issues before they could agree on a constitution. Two of the larger issues were slavery and representation in the Senate.

In the presence of a powerful fraction, there is nothing to protect the minority factions from being overpowered; that a true direct democracy would be incapable of maintaining the protection of liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness. A large republic government will impart power to elected representatives, making the power of factions to affect the vote is greatly decreased. Madison believes that this type of government should be put in the new constitution.

     In order to control the effects of a faction, Madison said that the government needed to have a checks and balance system. By doing this, factions are prevented from getting too powerful. This is the reason why the Americans clearly put a checks and balance system in the constitution. In the constitution, these rights are guaranteed (Ziegler 216-220).

In “Federalist 10”, James Madison explains and protects the checks and balances system in the Constitution of the United States. He says how each branch of our government is outlined so that its power checks the powers of the two other branches. He explains this by stating that there are factions, a majority faction and a minority faction. These factions are unified by a common belief or interest, and aim to protect the rights or interests of their community. If the power of the majority went unchecked, then the power they received could then be used to oppress the unpopular, or minority, views. The majority could also use their new power to take away the rights given to the minority.

Historians of the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries completely switched gears as they believed that an intent of self-gain and favorability of the wealthy elite spurred the decisions within the Constitution, rather than nationalism and protecting civil rights. Charles Austin Beard, author of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), was firm in his conviction that the framers set up the Constitution the way they did because of capitalism. Capitalism is almost the opposite of nationalism, the reason being that while nationalism consists of doing good for the whole country, capitalism is protecting one’s individual rights. This is very commonly associated with the protection of personal property. (CAPITALISM)

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is well-armed lamb contesting that vote.” I believe Franklin’s famous quote means that the majority of the vote does not represent all of the citizen’s interests, and this is unfair. For example, the two wolves would decide to eat the lamb for lunch and the lamb wouldn’t even get a say. However, if liberty (the lamb) had a tree on its property that it wanted to keep and the officials (the wolves) wanted to get rid of it, the lamb would get a say because the majority of the vote wouldn’t matter. The tree is on the lamb’s property, so it wouldn’t matter who else wants it there, because it’s the lamb’s right to keep it. Therefore, there are some matters where there is an imbalance of power in democracy, and other matters where individuals' rights are protected.

Charles Beard has argued that the Framers of the Constitution were no more than privileged men eager to protect the interests of their class. The participants of the Constitutional Convention were wealthy, property-yielding men that would gain the most from the laws they were invoking (such as property rights, public securities, trade and shipping, and free enterprise)There is evidence that would support Beard's claim of hierarchy in the writing

few reasons to believe that it does a worse one” (Hertzberg, 2002). Robert Dahl's main perspectives on the United States Constitution are the Framers of the Constitution are the ones who created the constitution. The framers perception was delineated by the things they know such as their falsely ideas of what they actually know. Although the framers have an idea of what they knew, there is always something that pause between their ideas such as the “political necessities of a particular movement”

Therefor although citizens may vote for a leader, they will then make decisions based on a small number of peoples view for the majority of the people. The minority ruling the majority.

The writers of the Constitution chose to have majority rule be a major part of the government so that the government would immediately reflect the desires of the people and so that minorities with crazy ideas would not be able to take over. They believed that the majority would be the most right group of people in the nation; and that the majority would decide right by conscience. In addition, the United States government is not a government based on justice, it is a government based on law. Any government based on justice would involve someone examining each specific scenario and deciding what was just. The founding fathers wanted to avoid this kind of government, as it was based on the opinion of a few people, and if these people became corrupted, they could have unlimited power. The founding fathers chose instead to enact a system of laws to which everyone would be held - even the government leaders. If the majority of people are following the teachings of the Bible, then the 'right' decided by the majority should be synonymous with the right decided by conscience; and this was the original intent of the founding fathers.

The Framer’s notion of a republic, or democratic republic form of government, rested on the necessity to limit the formation and success of factions. Yet, as Dahl argued, the irony of Madison’s aversions to factions is that, not long after the ratification of the

In discussing the Madisonian Dilemma, one must first ask, “How do you give government enough authority to preserve social order and communal values, but not so much that it places unfair and inappropriate limits on individual freedom of choice?” (Bond & Smith 2013, p. 111) This delicate balance between governmental rights and individual freedoms has been a source of much contention and debate. James Madison, a primary framer of the Constitution and author of 30 of the Federalist Papers, believed that the only way this balance of power could be achieved was through controlling the effects of factions through a representative government, fragmenting the power of that government and creating a system of checks and balances within, and

I agree with our forefathers that majority rule is the fairest way to hold any type of election . Klassen is correct in stating that when a majority gets their way, a minority does not. But again, he offers no alternative to our way of voting. He also used the word “ruled” when referring to the minority in order to make our system of voting seem as though it causes injustice. While we do live in a state that is governed by laws, I would not go so far as to say that we are a country that is “ruled.” In my opinion, the word “ruled” implies unfair, harsh treatment or injustice of some kind. I do not believe that our system of electing leaders leaves a minority to be “ruled.” I believe that