Et Tu, Brute?

A little-known sage named Robert Yates (Brutus I) warned us about all of it. Now two parties are floundering in various shades of authoritarianism in an attempt to clean up the mess.

The winners write history, goes the saying. And though the words of the Antifederalists like Robert Yates (Brutus) are still with us, the Blue Church educational apparatus treats them as footnotes—at best, honorable mentions.

But Brutus’s foresight is breathtaking.

Almost every one of Yates’s “Brutus I” concerns has hatched and grown into the monster he warned about. If there is to be a next time around, free people will do well to heed the words of this powdered wig from New York, who may never rest in peace until we take heed.

Henceforth, find Yates’s words in block quotes. I will offer dead letters in the italicized callouts, not as an idealistic anarchist but as a realistic pragmatist.

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A free republic cannot succeed over a country of such immense extent, containing such a number of inhabitants, and these increasing in such rapid progression as that of the whole United States.

Brutus was worried about our natural pluralism. He knew that people of different cultural and ideological outlooks would struggle to have their ways of life respected and represented.

Therefore, stronger subsidiarity rules are a minimum requirement for New America. Subsidiarity is a form of federalism where authority is devolved to the most local feasible level.

Both [Greece and Rome], it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.

Brutus thought the United States would become an imperial power. The more it sought influence over territories beyond its borders, the more it would consume itself internally. Today, there are more than 700 U.S. military bases around the world. Not only does the executive routinely exercise unconstitutional war powers, but the military-industrial complex also consumes resources that feed America’s war machine.

Therefore, New America must, as we have suggested, declare its neutrality and resist entanglements abroad.

[A republican form] must be confined to a single city, or at least limited to such bounds as that the people can conveniently assemble, be able to debate, understand the subject submitted to them, and declare their opinion concerning it.

All politics is local, thought Brutus, or at least it ought to be. Too large a republic would mean that America's far-flung peoples would be distracted by faraway matters and pulled away from deliberating about matters affecting them most. Presidential elections are a spectacle. Hot-button issues in another state pull our attention away. In the meantime, few can name their Congressman; fewer can name their State Senator. Less than 20 percent turn out for municipal elections. National politics distort our perceptions by minimizing what affects us daily but over which we have far more control.

Therefore, New America must devise rules and processes to change the dynamics, making politics more decentralized and participatory at the local level.

In every free government, the people must give their assent to the laws by which they are governed.

If most of Walla Walla’s relevant laws are made in Washington, D. C., then federalized representative government is a mirage. It would be nigh impossible for the former to have any influence over the latter. This is not merely a problem of distance versus localism, it is that there is no actual social contract, which is to say no real consent.

Therefore, institute consent-based systems within far smaller, more participatory jurisdictions, or cloud jurisdictions, as relevant.

The territory of the United States is of vast extent; it now contains near three millions of souls, and is capable of containing much more than ten times that number.

Today, the territory of the United States contains more than ten times that number. Since Brutus's time, the territorial United States grew and eventually annexed territory from Kentucky to California. Later, it included Alaska and Hawaii. And yet the people of Fairbanks and Maui live under the thumb of functionaries clustered in the Beltway.

Therefore, let three million be the maximum population for any territorial jurisdiction called a state. Any jurisdiction that exceeds that number must divide into two jurisdictions, which we’ll call calving. All laws that apply to more than three million people must be specifically enumerated in the Constitution and comport with the doctrine of equality before the law.

Region - 30 million
State - 3 million
County - 300,000
District - 30,000
Ward - 3,000

Superordinate regional authorities will be accountable for far less and have narrow powers. Subordinate jurisdictions, such as counties, will have control equal to the state’s authority but be restricted to specific domains. Only a superordinate authority will resolve disputes in a judiciary function, and its decisions will be final.

Now, in a large extended country, it is impossible to have a representation, possessing the sentiments, and of integrity, to declare the minds of the people, without having it so numerous and unwieldly, as to be subject in great measure to the inconveniency of a democratic government.

In discussing the people’s sentiments, Brutus is talking about their sovereignty as individuals and communities, not just popular sovereignty in the form of elections. This allergy to democratic government is a warning about the attenuation of individual sovereignty.

Therefore, following subsidiarity, majoritarian consensus should be used only at the most locally feasible level and only when other, more robust consensus mechanisms are inadequate.

In a republic, the manners, sentiments, and interests of the people should be similar. If this be not the case, there will be a constant clashing of opinions; and the representatives of one part will be continually striving against those of the other.

The idea is that people can and should cluster according to their values and culture and are likely to do so according to proximity. Brutus foresaw titanic election cycles in which politicians sought to unite radically diverse peoples under single, statutory monoliths—or executive orders. Interestingly, not only was Brutus correct that there would be significant clashes, but he also saw that these would eventually tear the country apart.

Therefore, let people not only self-organize by geography and proximity but also by culture and technological means.

“In despotic governments,..., standing armies are kept up to execute the commands of the prince or the magistrate, and are employed for this purpose when occasion requires: But they have always proved the destruction of liberty, and [are] abhorrent to the spirit of a free republic.”

Arguably, it is the apparatus of violence—both in standing armies and police working at the behest of politicians (magistrates)—that has turned America into an empire. We have even militarized our police to the point that we incarcerate more of our people and have more instances of police brutality than any of our peers. Brutus saw it coming a mile away.

Therefore, let us reorient our national defense and domestic police forces around peace and security and make them directly accountable to citizens through partial or wholesale privatization in competitive markets and/or open bidding.

In so extensive a republic, the great officers of government would soon become above the control of the people, and abuse their power to the purpose of aggrandizing themselves, and oppressing them.

Self-aggrandizement and abuse of power are as American as apple pie. Brutus saw that the special-interest state and the permanent bureaucratic class would obscure the machinations of the powerful to the point that it would become exceedingly difficult to ‘throw the bums out.’ Most people don’t have a clue what the bums are up to most of the time. Said bums are certainly not in our control. *Our democracy* creates the illusion of control, which keeps the people obedient between elections.

Therefore, when it comes to the rich and the powerful, make their meetings and machinations entirely transparent for the public.

They will use the power, when they have acquired it, to the purposes of gratifying their own interest and ambition, and it is scarcely possible, in a very large republic, to call them to account for their misconduct, or to prevent their abuse of power.

Brutus believed that centralizing authority would concentrate too much power in the hands of the few. The less power concentrated in the hands of the few, the less power will be auctioned off.

Therefore, limit the power officials can put on auction.

Legal scholar Trevor Burrus believes that not only were the antifederalists correct in their dire predictions but that their concerns could be combined into a single pressing question:

“Will a remote and distant government that wields a large amount of power over a vast land and a diverse people increasingly be seen as not representing the people, and, in the process, sow discord between them?”

Welcome to America.

And though the antifederalists have come to be known as those who would stand in the way of progress, that is, in the way of a document many revere, they are not, as Burrus writes, “knuckle‐​dragging philistines who allowed their parochial concerns about states’ powers to trump the good of the nation.” No. They were wise. Now they are being vindicated—even as the sound of Hamilton is still drowning out their voices:

I practiced the law, I practic'ly perfected it
I've seen injustice in the world and I've corrected it
|Now for a strong central democracy
If not, then I'll be Socrates
Throwing verbal rocks
At these mediocrities (aww)

And throw verbal rocks, Hamilton did. Written ones, too.

Of all the American Founders, we can conclude that although Madison tried to restrain the new republic's central power, Hamilton was the greatest exponent of centralized authority. He actively opposed the Bill of Rights. He was the High Mind of the Constitutional Convention. To the extent Hamilton got his way is the extent to which the republic has transmogrified into a creature that horrified the antifederalists: an empire.

With or without the Constitution, we’ll need to tone down the Lin Miranda songs after collapse. And someone somewhere will need to write some new songs about another New York sage almost nobody has heard of.

A sage named Robert Yates.