Many things have changed since the authors of The Federalist Papers made their case for limited government that would preserve individual liberty by setting ambition against ambition and thus aligning individual interests with a maximal amount of individual autonomy. Central to their case, as we discussed in class today, is the idea that different individuals and different groups have different interests, and in consequence, having many such groups and individuals makes it unlikely that a faction can be put together that would abuse the rights and limit the liberties of others.
Given that “social media” in the days of the founding of the United States was the public reading of newspapers amid any subsequent discussion that might ensue in pubs and coffee houses — discussions that, like so much else in the social life of the time, were almost invariably limited to white property-holding male participants — I wonder what the authors of The Federalist Papers would make of our contemporary scene, in which social media seem to permit both a much greater range of participants and a much greater platform for reaching people in almost real time. Do these changes in the media, both changes in who gets to participate in conversations and how those conversations are carried out, necessitate any reconsideration or reevaluation of the praise heaped on a large republic by the authors, especially by Madison in Federalist 10 and Federalist 51?
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