fn Homepage: These two quotes appeared in Joseph J. Ellis’s The Founding Brothers (p.42), Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
[1.] Not only subconsciously, of course. In Central America particularly, the US has imposed its will time and again to support the business of food production and resource extraction, as well to root out that evil Shape-Shifter however he appeared.
[2.] Indigenous People, of course, comprise a special category. Accepted shortly before extirpation into the fold of USAmerican People, they are to a degree recognized by us as retaining an antecedent authority to their own self-determination, even though we have not figured out how to reconcile the one with the other.
[3.] That guide leads them repeatedly to the truth of human nature as inversion of Cleopatra’s beauty in its infinite variety of self-love, private passion, and immediate interest.
[4.] People use the word in myriad contexts, traversing a range from broad to extremely narrow application. At a connotative root one understands the existence of some contention between individuals or groups of persons. At the etymological root one understands the contention to relate to polity, policy, or “the community” (πολισ) at the public level. In whatever sphere the idea of resolving a contest seems fundamental.)
[5.] Interestingly, the 11th Article admitted Canada, “but no other colony,” to the Union without further process of determination if it but chose to agree to the terms of the Articles.
[6.] “The persons of the citizens” (#15 and again in #16, The Federalist Papers)
[7.] As I write that number, the remarkable coincidence has presented itself that this year of 2020 also encompasses 157 years since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. That fact makes visceral, to me at least, what that bulk of time represents; and makes it easier to comprehend as lived experience the weight which twice that span plus four-score years and seven entails.
[8.] With John Dickinson
[9.] This was largely what Hamilton was remarking when he wrote of the deliberations affecting “too many particular interests, . . . too many local institutions.”
[10.] With one instance of “free persons. . .and. . .all other persons” [Apportionment clause, Article I, Sect. 2, ¶ 3]
[11.] We established this government for ourselves in this country to govern and be governed by ourselves.
[12.] Discounting—always discounting—the indigenous tribes who were set aside by temporary elevation as people of their own sovereign nationhood.
[13.] The Federalist Papers, #22
[14.] The Federalist Papers, #10
[15.] The Federalist Papers, #15
[16.] Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.
The Federalist Papers, #37
[17.] Referred to by delegate George Mason already on day 2 of the Constitutional Convention.
[18.] The Federalist Paper #10
[19.] Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia, drafted in 1777
[20.] The Federalist Paper #10. Already in the early days of the Convention, on June 6, Madison remarked, in a speech which served him later as a first draft of that famous 10th paper, “We have seen the mere distinction of color made[,] in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercized by man over man.” I think no one should be too quick to condemn Madison utterely for having been born a slave-holder and not thereafter giving it up. It was one facet of a complicated person in a complicated time, and certainly not his best. But he did understand its repugnance.
[21.] The Federalist Paper #15
The Long Clasp 