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Jun 14, 2022·edited Jun 14, 2022Liked by Andrew Van Wagner

A lot of interesting food for thought here. I do want to add two things to what you wrote. One is an addition in agreement to what you said regarding the education system, the other a bit of context to add to the Madison observation.

1) As you said, our education system is designed to reward obedience and to stifle critical thinking. The model of US education is based off of Prussian military indoctrination and has never truly veered away from it. US public education formation is a fascinating history and it explains so much as to why we have a population utterly incapable of critical thought at times. It is by design.

This article I found to be helpful in understanding the history of public education in the US. I highly recommend reading it when you get a chance. https://www.dailyrepublic.com/all-dr-news/solano-news/local-features/local-lifestyle-columns/eye-on-education-prussia-model-influences-american-public-school-system/

2) I want to add some context to the Madison bit. He DID say what you quoted, and it is mind-boggling that the quote is not shown verbatim in schools. However, in this instance, he was referring to the reason they needed to establish the US Senate specifically, not that every facet of the US government needed to protect the opulent minority. His greatest fear was that US society would succumb to the "tyranny of the majority" and all of his ideas are devoted to ensuring that no one group had too much unchecked power over another.

If you look through the federalist papers (no.51 to be exact), Madison was a strong believer in "checks and balances" across all aspects of US government. This included protecting the wealthy against the "tyranny of the majority" through the Senate, but also protecting the states against the federal government, and ensuring that no one group had too much power over everyone (including the wealthy not having too much power over everyone else). "Checks and balances" is a term used ad nauseum, but Madison was a strong believer in it. I highly recommend reading Federalist paper number 51 if you get a chance because it's insightful and is the foundation for a lot of US government today for better or for worse. Here's the Wikipedia version of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._51#:~:text=Madison%20emphasized%20that%20a%20system,are%20not%20necessarily%20all%20angel

Jefferson said that "sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him?" Madison concurred with this sentiment that human beings are not angels, and that there needed to be a system in place that ensured that problematic people could not get too much power, control the whole country and rule it with an iron fist. Do I think that this vision mentioned above panned out? No... Not really. But I do think this is important context to add when talking about Madison. To use the quote you mentioned as proof that he wanted an oligarchy and/or had contempt for the common person misses the larger context as to why he said what he said.

Keep up the good work, really been enjoying your articles as of late when I get the chance to read them. Especially the Lieven one and the one regarding Yemen.

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