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The Original Argument: The Federalists' Case For The Constitution, Adapted For The 21st Century (2000)

by Glenn Beck(Favorite Author)

4.09 of 5 Votes: 3

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review 1: It is difficult to convey just how bad this version of the Federalist Papers is to anyone who has not struggled with the original, majestic language of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay and spent hours digesting their carefully crafted arguments. Anybody who has, however, will be appalled at the ineptness of this translation, the shallowness of the commentary, and the almost pathological historical ignorance that Mr. Beck and Mr. Charles have brought to one of our nation's great literary and philosophical treasures.I generally think that people should read things like the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence in their original versions. The language of the late eighteenth century is not as different from the language of today as Beck protests in... more his introduction, and we owe it to the Founders we revere to read what they had to say in their own words. There are many good editions of the Federalist Papers that provide glosses and footnotes for the more difficult words and passages--the occasional antiquated usage should not be a bar to reading America's original founding documents.However, if one is going to "revise" the words of the Founders into a youth-friendly, 21st century idiom, one had better know something about the language of the time period and the context of the documents. The Mary Webster edition in fact does this and presents an updated version of the papers that is as accurate and as informed as a careful scholar can make them.Glenn Beck, and his collaborator, Joshua Charles, on the other hand, simply are not up to the task that they set for themselves in revising this work.I have seen enough of Mr. Beck that I did not come to the book with very high expectations. I was fairly sure, for example, that the introductory material and the commentary would wrench Publius's words out of context and apply them simplistically to every plank of the Modern Tea Party's platform--which, in fact, it does. I also suspected that some of the original papers that did not conform to this agenda would be eliminated entirely--which, in fact, they were (the book updates only 33 of the 85 Federalist Papers, and Hamilton's vital #30 and #31, which argue for virtually unlimited taxation power for the federal government, are nowhere to be found). All of this I was prepared for.Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the utter ineptness of the "translation" itself. As a professional scholar of the 18th century (albeit the British 18th century), I have had some exposure to the way that people wrote 230 years ago. And as an avid admirer, and frequent reader of the Federalist Papers, I have put a lot of effort into understanding and appreciating what its three authors meant to say. When I read this purportedly accurate updating of the language, I was appalled. Nearly every page contains at least one major paraphrasing error, sometimes altering, and sometimes completely reversing the intent of the original. Substitutions are made for perfectly good English words for no apparent reason. And important phrases, sentences, and whole paragraphs simply disappear in the updating exercise.A catalog of the clear paraphrasing errors of this translation would require many pages, but I can't resist sharing a few. First, compare the following rather important passage from Hamilton's Federalist #1, first in the original and then in the updated version:ORIGINAL: A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.BECK: Dangerous ambition often lurks more in those who have excessive enthusiasm for the rights of the People than those who believe in a firm and efficient government. History proves that the former more often leads to tyranny than the latter, and that the people who have trampled on the liberties of a republic often began their campaigns by being overly concerned with the rights of the People and helping to end tyranny.Notice what the updater has done with the final part of this passage. Hamilton was launching an all-out attack on the "Anti-Federalists" (Patrick Henry, George Mason, George Clinton, etc.), who had been arguing that a strong federal government would abrogate the rights of the people. Hamilton said that, historically, despotic rulers start out as demagogues and end up as tyrants. In the translation, however, demagoguery is excised entirely from the text (hmm, wonder why) and Hamilton's "ending tyrants," by which he very clearly means "ending up tyrants" becomes "helping to end tyranny." I doubt if there could be a more consequential mistake in representing the opinions of the Founding Fathers than confusing "helping to end tyranny" with "ending up a tyrant.My second illustration comes from the opening passage of Madison's magisterial Federalist #10, perhaps the best known of all the Federalist Papers:ORIGINAL: Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it.BECK: None of the benefits that a well-constructed Union brings deserves to be considered more than its tendency to decrease and control the violence that typically comes with opposing political factions.The friends of popular government are understandably alarmed by the tendency of the factions within any government to engage in violence. Violence always puts both the character and the fate of the government at risk. If this is the case, then these friends of popular government would be wise to carefully consider a Plan that, far from violating their principles, actually provides a cure for this problem.The errors here stem from not understanding how Madison used the term "violence of faction," which the updater naively translates as "engage in violence" the way that fifth graders do on the playground after school. Madison, of course, meant nothing of the sort. Rather, he was arguing that factions, or special interest groups, constituted a kind of political violence on the entire body politic. When people combine into factions--he explains in the same introduction--then "the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties" and "measures are . . . decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."One of the major clues that Madison is not talking about physical violence in this essay is that he never brings it up again. He does, though, talk at great length about the metaphorical violence that a permanent majority can inflict on a minority. To reduce his brilliant analysis to a warning against the outbreak of physical violence is to miss the beauty and the importance of what the great man was saying.In his introduction to this edition, Beck strongly recommends that we do NOT read the original Federalist Papers. "Let's be honest," he says, "they're written in terribly hard-to-read eighteenth-century English, they reference things that most of us have never heard about, and, let's just say it: They seem irrelevant."A few pages later, however, he launches into a fairly predictable broadside against the liberal elite who don't want you to read the works of the Founding Fathers: "Even today, some people would prefer that you not read the Federalist Papers. Instead they would rather contort Publius's words to serve their own narrow ideological ends."Exactly.
review 2: So I read this as I was going through my copy of the Federalist Papers and I have to say it helped. Beck's introductions were insightful and informative. Reading through these to books created a desire to see men and women run for office that truly understood the Constitution. It should be a required process for each senator and congressman to read through the Federalist Papers and the Constitution their inaugural year in office. This would solve a ton of problems. less

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