Plausibly Live! - The Official Podcast Of The Dave Bowman Show

I have long held that the Anti-Federalist of 1788 is the ideological grandfather of today’s libertarian*. Many of the same issues of today find a distant echo in the complaints of the Anti-Federalists. In those distant echo’s of the past are many ideas and knowledge points which both the Federalist and Anti-Federalist not only knew, but understood. Many of the things that would have stood out to the readers and listeners of 1788 were familiar to them, but to our modern ears and eyes, either make no sense or we simply do not even recognize them as meaningful. Let’s start with the names. The Federalists papers, written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, signed their papers with the nom de plume “Publius.” There were, of course, multiple reasons for this. The the use of a fictitious name removed the built in prejudice from the reader, either for or against the actual author. The name “Publius” was partially chosen to represent the idea, specifically “of the people,” reflecting the Federalist p