However the greatest danger from factions, Madison thought were "majority factions" (i.e. the poor). Madison is confident that a minority faction can be handled by the mechanisms of popular government, although he assumes people would actually do something and not just sit back passively if a minority was trying to take control or "usurp" authority. Majority factions however have spelt doom for democratic governments since ancient times Madison argues. He believes that the Constitution contains the "cure" for the democratic "disease." He singles out two aspects: representative government and the large size of the state. He identifies these as the major difference between "republican" and "democratic" government. Democracy was kind of a dirty word for many of the founders and they preferred "republic" (Latin for "the people's business") instead. The point he is trying to make is that he believes that voting for representatives from among the "wise property owners" would add stability to the government.

I chose this passage because it really made me think hard about the way today’s government operates and how nearly Utopian it would be if it actually operated the way Madison envisioned it to.

As I read this passage it wasn’t much of a stretch to see how what Madison refers to as “majority factions” for which he used the poor as an example have now morphed into what we refer to as lobbyists who are paid by the rich and powerful, both people and corporations, to sway the vote of our representatives in their favor rather than in the best interest of the people who elected them as their representatives. The first major difference in modern government is that the factions we now need to be concerned about are not the poor but quite opposite, the very rich.  His fear was that these “majority factions” could undermine the power of the government making it no longer representative of all the people but rather just a majority portion of the people.  Today we have “minority factions” doing just this.  It has often been said that money is power and in the case of our government today this couldn’t be truer. Although he believed that representatives being chosen from the “wise property owners,” in other words what we would refer to today as the upper class would be the cure for this problem.  In today’s world this concept has backfired. He felt that if people were elected from the “wise” the more educated, and the people who had money that these same people would do the right thing in representing the population as a whole.  In a perfect world this might be true, but in both the time that Madison believed this and even more so in today’s world this is a very idealistic statement.  People are and always have been more concerned with their own self-interests and in the case of politicians; the interests of the people who get them into office and these people are the minority not the majority.

All we need to do is to look at the politicians who are elected to represent “the people.”  Rarely if ever do the representatives come from the lower or even the middle class.  They come from the people that Madison proposed they would be the upper class, the people who have money because these are the people with the power and connections to raise the money necessary to run a campaign and get elected to office.  Once they are in office they become obligated to the people who got them there; once again the people with the power and the money.  Now it may be true that politicians must, at least to the so extent represent and support the wants of the majority who elected them, or at least give the appearance that this is what they are doing because being a representative is a paying job and these people wish the keep their job and even more so, the power and prestige that comes with it.  However at the same time they are indebted to the powerful people and large corporations who enabled them to win the trust of the majority of the people and thus be elected.

So although Madison’s idealistic idea of a “representative government” and “the large size of the state” do in many ways add to the stability of the government they do not in any way cure the influence of the “majority factions” but instead allows for the formation of “minority factions,” once again the rich and elite to usurp the power of the government.  By allowing lobbyists, who represent a “small faction,” and for rich and powerful people to have so much influence over elections and our representatives; to influence the votes of the representatives who have been duly elected to represent all the people, sway their votes in an effort to support those who got them elected and not truly the majority of the people.  This is certainly not what the founding fathers envisioned as the way our government should operate.