If James Madison were alive today, he would say that it is not the office of government that poses a threat to the American people, but the people themselves who are the true threat to freedom.
That's what one scholar said Thursday at the University of Oklahoma in his last in a series of lectures on Madison's political thought. Jack N. Rakove, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian explored Madison's writings about government to determine what this Constitution maker thought about the structure and purpose of government.
Rakove's lecture Thursday afternoon, titled "Wherever the Real Power Lies," was the third in his series this week for the 2009 Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series in Representative Government, sponsored by the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma. The lecture is delivered every other year.
Rakove gave lectures Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. He also was honored with a dinner Tuesday evening at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
Rakove's credentials to speak about Madison is impeccable. In addition to publishing more than one book on Madison himself, he is the W.R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University and is a leading scholar on the Constitution. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize in History for his book "Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution."
In the 2009 Rothbaum Lecture this week, Rakove looked behind Madison's best-known writings about the Constitution. Rakove said that much of the originality of Madison's thinking was derived from an intense interest in the process and substance of law-making.
It's that interest in the substance that led him to the conclusion that the real power in the U.S. lies in the majority of the community, Rakove said.
In European monarchies, the power had always been in the hands of the leader and it followed that the danger of oppression also lay in the leader, Madison said.
In a republic like the U.S., however, certain elected officials and courts were given power on paper, but they're power is derived from the people.
As a result, whatever the majority of the group (municipality, state or electorate of one representative) wants, that is what will happen, Rakove said Madison argued. And they will look to their own interests at the expense of others, he said.
Therefore the danger of oppression in the U.S. is not from a king but the masses, he said.
The power of the government isn't actually from its laws, it's from the people, Madison said.
"The real power therefore is not constitutional, it's political," Rakove said.
As a result, the parts of the U.S. government with the most power -- and therefore the greatest danger of abusing that power -- are those closest to the people. A smaller group is available, which makes it more likely for a majority to arise to abuse the rights of the minority, Rakove said Madison said.
"The smaller the entity, the easier it is to get a factious majority," Rakove said.
Rakove said Madison argued this in the Federalist Papers, giving this as an explanation why the federal government should be strengthened.
The key proponent of the Bill of Rights argued that the bill itself would not protect people, but the knowledge of the rights could make people aware of injustice being acted upon them. When people then demanded their rights, the Bill of Rights would serve as a reminder to the community to keep tyranny in check, Madison said in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1788.
Madison also said that the Bill of Rights would benefit the American people as it is incorporated into the culture over time: "The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free government, and as they become incorporated with the national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion."
Julianna Parker Jones 366-3541 jparker@normantranscript.com
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Madison: Real power lies closest to the people
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