The Founders’ great insight was that such policies—policies that win the support of large and diverse majorities—are more likely to be wise policies than those that can only win the support of a narrow faction.
Madison articulates this conviction—the rationale for our Constitution—in Federalist #51:
In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place upon any other principles than those of justice and the general good.
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president, explained that the Founders’ structural solution would require us to put the common interests that we share ahead of the narrower interests that divide us:
We have no interests nor passions different from those of our fellow citizens. We have the same object: the success of representative government. Nor are we acting for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race…our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self-government. The eyes of suffering humanity are fixed on us… and on such a theatre, for such a cause, we must suppress all smaller passions and local considerations.
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