After reading this for the first time straight through, I have determined two things. I am more states'-rights than federalist. One of the big mistakes made in forming a federal government was in the way senators are elected. Originally, the two senators from each state were to be chosen by the states' legislature. This would have given an enormous amount of power to state representatives and would have tied the state government more tightly to that of the national government. Why have citizens directly elect representatives and senators? The whole idea for the senate was to provide a wiser and more sober check upon the passionate surges representatives directly elected by would engage in. Why bother have two houses of a parliament/congress when they are all elected by the same people? Kind of silly, but it did make the federal government more powerful with respect to state governments.

The other thing I learned is that the Bill of Rights was a bad idea. The Federalist Paper writers even thought so! They feared that delineating the rights of the people beyond the constitution itself would actually limit the scope of the peoples' rights by naming them specifically. This is exactly what happened. We have big brother government 200 years later. Why does the federal government have to say the press has rights? Of course they do! But in so declaring the press has rights, the federal government assumes it has justification to control, limit, and interfere with those rights! The federal government can then extend its powers beyond those named in the constitution. What does this mean? You could not HAVE an FCC without the Bill of Rights! By saying the press has rights, the feds can define them! Bill of Rights...bad idea...more like a Bill of Big-Time Government telling the citizens what they can and cannot do, way beyond the vision of the constitution.