Minerva Deadline EXTENDED!

Breaking news:

Thesil has extended the deadline for Minerva entries to April 15th, which means that I might actually be able to finish my piece in time. We'll see.

And MANY THANKS! to Val Schrock for making the button for us! (visible on all of the WFI's pages)

TJ and Soft Power

In Harper's this week, Jefferson anticipates the doctrine of soft power:

I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.

–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Leiper, June 12, 1815, in: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial ed.), vol. 14, p. 308

Federalist Paper No. 7

Poor Hamilton. He wishes he could just leave the question of what could make the states fight each other, at just: the same reasons every other group of states has ever fought against one another. But he needs to address the particulars of the American situation, so his ink can’t be spared.

The reasons he addresses are:

1. Territorial disputes (par. 2-4)
2. Competitions of commerce (par. 5-6)
3. Public debt of the Union (par. 7-8)
4. Laws in violation of private contracts (par. 9)

As he states, reasons 1 and 2 aren’t unique to America, but he does have reason to argue that 3 and 4 are.

By ‘public debt of the Union’, Hamilton refers primarily to the accumulated war debt. There are two problems he sees with leaving this debt to be dealt with by the single states:

1. The apportionment of debt: The different states accumulated different losses and costs based on their role in the Revolutionary war (heavier losses of human life, destruction of property, interruption of trade), in the pursuit of the common good – independence. How, then should the costs be apportioned – by the ability of each state to pay, by costs that were not paid out at the time, etc? Each state will obviously want to minimize its debt.
2. How to discharge the debt: Apparently, members of some of the states ‘either less impressed with the importance of national credit, or because their citizens have little, if any, immediate interest in the question’ to paying ANY of the debt. On the other side, there are citizens who are creditors to the Revolutionary army and young nation, and really want to be paid back. Not to mention, some countries (France) lent the Americans money, and not paying back allies is a sure-fire way to make any support disappear.

The final point Hamilton raises is ‘laws in violation of private contracts’. I don’t follow this quite as easily, but my understanding is that a citizen of one state enters into a contract with a citizen of another state, after which the legislature of the first state passes some law that violates the contract between the two citizens, and injures the citizen of the second state. And since the citizen of the second state’ rights are violated, then his state will have to act to protect him, and now suddenly two states are having a go over this contract and the interfering law. In his example of Connecticut and Rhode Island, it almost seems as if Rhode Island’s legislature passed laws that would harm citizens of Connecticut on purpose, which doesn’t seem like a very neighborly thing to do. Or as Hamilton puts it, a ‘[breach] of moral obligation and social justice.’ (On a side note, no wonder he got into a duel with Aaron Burr)

As always, Hamilton says it better than I. From his conclusion:

The probability of incompatible alliances between the different States or confederacies and different foreign nations, and the effects of this situation upon the peace of the whole, have been sufficiently unfolded in some preceding papers…[T]his conclusion is to be drawn, that America, if not connected at all, or only by…feeble tie… [would] be gradually entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths of European politics and wars; and by the destructive contentions… would be likely to become a prey to the artifices and machinations of powers… Divide et impera must be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us.

.... And We're Back!

Ok, so that was a nice vacation (I wish). We Are Publius has been on hiatus these past 2 months because I've been busy setting up some other blogging projects (the Everyday Idealist, Blogworthy, and The List), and I've been up to my eyeballs in WFI work. I've also been doing some spring cleaning (mental and blog) because I felt I was getting off-topic with WAP (less confusing than calling it Publius, since there was that other guy...), but had nowhere else to go.

My hope is that the EI will solve that problem, and allow WAP to focus better on federalism (US and otherwise) and other issues of international and global law and governance, and therefore less on the US, except as it pertains to the global picture.

I'm also floating the idea of possibly getting some of my friends in the movement (World Federalist Movement, that is) to contribute. We shall see.

In the meantime, Federalist Paper No. 7 (remember those?) will be posted shortly (end of day), and I've got some topics I've been saving to write about.

I'm still growing into both blogging and We Are Publius - both what my intentions are and what it means to have set this responsibility for myself. Expect that I'll continue to make changes to both the format and content. I'd like to bring in more outside links and make a wider range of resources available. And as I develop the WFI's webpages, the resources I find most useful will be linked here.

I'm a little ambivalent about short posts with just links, but I don't see them disappearing. I read somewhere that a really good article is one about which you have nothing further to say. As part of Publius, I want to share those articles, even if I have nothing to add to the debate. But it is easy to substitute them for originial content, and I don't want to do that either. Either way (with or without short entries), I think I'd like my posting to be a tad more judicious.

Final housekeeping details: all old WAP posts are still available and I'm testing a calendar feature to manage Today in Federalism announcements.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Today in Federalism, Belated Edition

While I was gone:

March 2, 1788: New York publishing firm J. & A. McLean published the first thirty-six [Federalist Papers] as a bound volume, titled The Federalist.

For upcoming Today in Federalism events, check out the cool new widget by Beautiful Beta.

Federalism 101

Cool video intro from the Forum of Federations.

Hat tip: World Federalist Movement- Institute for Global Policy Facebook group

Minerva Deadline

As a heads-up for aspiring authors of global governance policy, the deadline for Minerva vol. 32 is March 15.

To submit, please contact the editor:

thesil [at] midcoast.com
or

Minerva
PO Box 397
Waldoboro, ME 04572

Thesil is a fantastic person and she puts out a really top quality publication. If you can't submit, but still want to read the journal, either contact Thesil at the above address or read it online in PDF form.