Federalism and the Founders

In my column last week, I noted that the Founders made it intentionally difficult for the federal government to impose sweeping legislation on smaller states, and argued that an abandonment of federalist principles actually helped explain the polarization in Washington. This has provoked a number of responses from liberal critics.

Over at Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein took issue with my drawing a distinction between a “pure democracy” and a representative republic. Bernstein insisted the two were effectively synonymous. Because the point was somewhat tangential to my overall argument, in my initial column, I didn’t have the room to expand on the distinction, which was a reference to Federalist No. 10, written by James Madison.