Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
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A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.
Republicans have spent decades shit-talking government. And of course we need to be vigilant, and maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to how we regard political power, but one of the truly shitty things that's been going on is the turning upside down of fairly simple ideas like "patriotism".
That's a word that should mean we stand up for the form of our government, for the principles of good self-governance that tries to organize around "the best for the most, but equity for all".
But it's been co-opted and bastardized. It's come to mean it's OK to take political power by force because all government is bad, and anyone who defends democratic traditions and institutions must be an evil big gubmint deep state race-betraying mongrel who lights puppies on fire and throws them onto your grandma's porch because they wanna take her house away from her and give it to a bunch of criminal immigrants so they can steal your job that doesn't even exist anymore because the mill was shut down and moved to Bangladesh 15 years ago by the people who paid for all this political advertising propaganda.
And if you're confused by all that, then good - that's what we want. We have to keep you off balance and uncertain, because eventually you'll want nothing more than the "stability" of being ruled by a system of powerful elites that we've been telling you is the problem this whole time.
Still confused? Well, maybe you're just not smart enough or good enough to understand, so obviously, you need us to be in charge for a while longer.
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