Prof. Ilya Somin has a brief post criticizing some perceived shortcomings of James Madison on the issue of factions. I responded with the following comment:
I don't think these are fair criticisms of Madison at all. Madison could not possibly have imagined that Americans would so eagerly give up so much of their freedom to create the regulatory welfare state. He thought, and was correct, that America was far more prone to centrifugal forces. The ideology of centralization was part of the Progressive era agenda that was directly contrary to virtually every element of Madison's political philosophy. He would have been simply blown away by that agenda--every element of it. I don't think he can be accused of not forseeing that Americans would try to reconcile the founders' constitution with such an agenda--that would be like accusing Henry Ford of not forseeing that people might put sugar in someone's gas tank.
As far as your first critique, Madison does not rely entirely on the republican principle to counteract minority factions. He explains that one method of preventing this problem is an independent judiciary which will enforce the constitution against factions that capture legislatures. The problem, as he sees it (and as historically he naturally would see it) is that a "will independent of the people," while effective in preventing such faction problems, tends to become so independent that it then starts ruling in its own interest--and (in one of his subtler observations) that the federal judiciary is in fact a republican institution that is (indirectly) controlled by the majority, so that it cannot entirely prevent faction-capture problems. It is one method, but not perfect.
But nothing is perfect. At the Richmond Convention, when Patrick Henry complained that the Congress would do all sorts of nasty things to us, Madison replied, "Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."
In other words, Madison rightly saw that there was no institution that would prevent the people from (in Oliver Wendell Holmes' timeless expression) choosing to go to hell. For more on this, see Gary Rosen's fantastic book, American Compact, which is the best study of Madison's reliance on what you might call a civic religion of the Constitution as the only sure preventative against tyranny. Also very good is Lance Banning's The Sacred Fire of Liberty, which demolishes the ludicrous Irving Brant-inspired myth of the "Two Madisons."
(While we're on this subject, let me give a shout out to Drew McCoy's brilliant The Last of the Fathers, a great book on the late Madison, as well as The Business of May Next, by one of my very favorite writers, William Lee Miller. Of course Ralph Ketcham's very good biography is a must. But I strongly recommend against Garrett Ward Sheldon's awful book, which is absolutely not about the political philosophy of the actual James Madison, or the truly terrible biography by Gary Wills, who seems dedicated to indicting Madison on any grounds he can come up with, including baseless and contradictory ones.)
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