Were the Founding Fathers Democratic Reformers?

The document The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action was written by John P. Roche. He says that the founding fathers were indeed very democratic about their decisions. They were "committed...to working within the democratic framwork, within a universe of public approval." His documents states that the group of people who carried on the job of Constitutionalists were nationalist and some spokesmen of various "parochial bailiwicks." The Constitution had to be fought for in fields of Civil War before principals of the constitution could be brought up. After reading Roche's document, I went over to the document A People's History in the United States, by Howard Zinn. Zinn declares that the Founding Fathers were just rich men who had some direct interest in making a strong federal government. He said four groups were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women and men without property. Although this is just a random fact, I'll add it anyways. On September 19, (my birthday!!!) 1780, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts met and said that eleven leaders of Shays' Rebellion "unlawfully and by force of arms" prevented the process of justice and laws of commonwealth. They were going to meet again a week later to talk of Luke's Day being "indicted." Anyways, Zinn suggests that the Constitutionalists' problem with democracy lay simply in the division of the social classes: the rich and the poor. He says, according to James Madison, that the real problem is that the Founding Fathers had a faction going on and the solution would be to have a more Republic government. Finally, he says that the Foudning Fathers did not want balance in the government, especially not between slaves and masters, people lacking property and property holders, and the Native Americans and the Whites.

I believe that John P. Roche's agument (the "yes" document) was more convincing. Zinn's document has a lot of accusations that couldn't be proved, like that ALL of the founding fathers did like the poor. Many of them had started out in poor families and knew what it was like to be poor. I know that a few of them didn't believe that some of the country's people weren't smart enough to vote or anything, but I believe the fathers still cared for them. They were highly intelligent men who deserve all the credit for making a Constitution that has been effective and run without many glitches for over two-hundred years.

Federalist Paper #51

The Federalist Paper number 51 is titled "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments." This paper basically talks about how checks and balances should be set up in order to establish an equal balance of power. It also talks about how we should go about the separation of powers for the National Government. It talks about how the Legistlative brance is the most powerful and should therefore be separated into different parts so get that equal balance of power.

I think this paper deserves to be in the top papers. It states a lot of things that we have, for instance the legistive system. We have a bicameral legislature, which means that there are two houses that decide things in it. This document was a little more interesting than #10 because I was more understandable to read. Oh, and this paper was also written by James Madison.

Federalist Paper #10

Basically, the Federalist paper number 10 talks about faction. The WHOLE thing repeats the word "faction" about 100 times, so i figured there must be some importance to the meaning of the word. A faction is any group of citizens who come together with similar passions and ideas who work hard to revise the rights of the citizens. The Republican government didn't want these factions to be coming together because they didn't want that little bit of people to come together and make a big group of people. Then it talks about the union and how it is better for promoting commerce and the overall general wealth of the new country, especially in the competition against Britain.

This document was honestly the longest, most drawn out document I have ever read in my history of history classes. I truely cannot get over how many times faction was used. The document was repetitively repetitive. So, does this document deserve to be in the top ten documents of the the Federalist papers? Obviously, it was put as one of the tops for a reason, so I think that it does deserve to be in the top ten. The Federalists who wrote this one spent a lot of time on this document, making sure to get their point across. Factions are bad, the union if good, end of story.

Should Columbus Day continue to be celebrated in the U.S.?

I believe that Columbus day should not be celebrated in the U.S. In school, we learned that Columbus was a brave and fearless man who said "oops" when he sailed to America instead of the Indies. But, so many things about Columbus are things that make him so not worthy of being remembered for. For instance, Columbus was a very harsh and cruel man. He was terrible to the indian tribes. All he was looking for was gold, and if they didnt find any, they'd get cruel punishments, like losing a hand. Therefore, Columbus Day should not be continued in the U.S. I like how Mayor Herb Bergson declared Columbus Day "Indigenous Peoples Day" with the help of the Indian youth called the Native Youth Agenda. It's a very good idea and the Native American's deserve ten times more celebration than Colombus.

Where would I Want to Live in the English Colonies?

If i were to live in one of the three English Colonies, I'd probably live in one of the Middle Colonies. They were right in the middle of the New England and Southren Colonies. Some advantages of living in the Middle Colony would be that you could have religious freedom there (because that's why they was founded), they had more of a social and economic democracy, and they had an o.k. education system (at least better than the Southren Colonies.) Another good thing about the middle colonies was that they were known for their bread, and I like bread! The disadvantages of living in the Middle Colonies would be that they were industry based colonies (I'm not much of a factory girl), they were more ethnically diverse, so you'd have to get used to being with a ton of different people from different cultures speaking different languages right at once, which isn't always fun, and that women could not attend colleges, something I'd definately want to do when graduating high school.