POL 166 Assignment #2

The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued)

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Thursday, November 22, 1787

[James Madison]

"It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency."

In this passage written by James Madison, he describes how liberty is essential to political life and how liberty itself also feeds factions.  The "first remedy" referred to by Madison is the removal of liberty to prevent factions which will in turn eliminate the adverse affects on the rights of other citizens.  He then proceeds to say that the idea of removing liberty is folly and likens the notion to the "annihilation of air."

I chose this passage because of how Madison compared liberty to air and the dangers of a faction to fire. The idea of curing the mischief of a faction by removing liberty is tantamount to a remedy being far worse than it's disease. 

POL 166 Assignment #1

Trans-National America

Randolph Bourne

We are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made between us they should rightly be on some other ground than indigenousness. The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting-pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of "giving themselves without reservation" to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land. They invented no new social framework. Rather they brought over bodily the old ways to which they had been accustomed. Tightly concentrated on a hostile frontier, they were conservative beyond belief. Their pioneer daring was reserved for the objective conquest of material resources. In their folkways, in their social and political institutions, they were, like every colonial people, slavishly imitative of the mother-country. So that, in spite of the "Revolution," our whole legal and political system remained more English than the English, petrified and unchanging, while in England law developed to meet the needs of the changing times.

In this passage, the essayist, Mr. Randolph Bourne,  takes issue with the idea of the "melting-pot."   He writes that the early colonists did not come to America with the intention to assimilate and or adopt the culture of the American Indian but rather to create their own.  However, they did not create a new culture or social framework.  Instead, they continued to hold on to the ways of the old world.

I chose this passage because of how Mr. Bourne refers to all Americans as foreign born or descendant's of foreign born parents.  The thought of stripping one of their culture in the name of assimilation didn’t sit well with me  and it struck a chord with me.