Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

by Robert Kagan

Two centuries later, the idea of nullification or secession may seem more exotic, but the basic facts of the American system remain unchanged. As James Wilson put it during the debates over ratification, the Constitution would acquire “value and authority” only with the people’s acceptance.[14] Although the Constitution was meant to be binding once adopted, and the process for amending it was made deliberately arduous, it was true at the founding and it remains true today that without broad popular acceptance of the system’s legitimacy the voluntary compact could collapse. At that point, the Union could be held together only by the force of the federal government acting in quasi-tyrannical fashion. This was one of many reasons why the American founding generation was anxious about whether the government they created could possibly last. Was popular self-government—government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as Lincoln later put it—really possible? Madison and the founders hoped that they were establishing the new system on a solid foundation of interest. But they understood that there also had to be something more, a love of freedom as an abstract ideal, a willingness to compromise, and above all a willingness to fight not only for one’s own rights but for everyone else’s rights, too. This was the “republican virtue” they believed necessary to hold the system together. Madison and his colleagues agreed that it was “chimerical” to believe that any form of...