On February 6, 1788, James Madison, future American president, who in addition to being known as one of the founding fathers was considered the promoter of the American Constitution, wrote in one of his articles in the series known as “Federalist Papers”: “If men were angels, there would be no need for government or internal or external controls….in a government of men, you must first enable the government to control its governed and, secondly, force it to control itself.”
Madison hoped that ethics could stop the menacing jungle of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1588-1679) and his bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all).
The libertarian ideal of “ordered anarchy” would only be possible if men behaved like angels (which is far from the case).
Madison himself clarified that “any form of government that will guarantee the freedom or happiness of the people without any virtue is a chimerical idea.”
The virtue of citizens is essential to the prosperity of a nation.
Hence another phrase that he immortalized: “the dissemination and advancement of knowledge is the only guardian of true freedom.”
However, he warned that this “freedom may be in danger from the abuse of freedom itself, but also from the abuse of power.”
Madison, as we said, is considered the father of the Constitution, but he was convinced that if these laws were so voluminous, abstruse and incoherent that they could not be understood by ordinary people, they only helped to create disorder, confusion and disobedience.
Having 40,000 laws like those that coexist in Argentina only increases conflicts and litigation.
A great defender of individual freedoms (although, like almost all the founding fathers, he owned slaves but believed that slavery was “a stigma in a free nation”), he was also a great promoter of republicanism.
For Madison, it was necessary to create the means for majorities to respect individual opinions, as long as they are within the law and do not promote sedition.
“The government that concentrates on satisfying the desire of the majority easily falls into the oppression of minorities,” was Madison's maxim with Aristotelian roots.
He also maintained that it was “the duty of the government to respect the rights of people and their property,” an unavoidable task that has been blurred by a wasteful and prebendary populism.
Madison believed that freedom was more frequently violated by gradual and silent usurpations by those in power than by abrupt and violent usurpations.
A very topical comment due to the dominance of the media by those who use power to impose their interests.
And finally, for these inflationary times where the currency is devalued by the minute, James Madison reminds us that the circulation of trust is better than the circulation of money!
Madison was one of the thinkers who inspired Juan Bautista Alberti to draft the bases of our Constitution, but Argentina ended up being a federation in form, although unitary in the management of the economy, a Republic that was not always respectful of minorities and a Democracy that easily becomes the tyranny of half plus one.