I’ll just make two points. The first point follows from Harvey Mansfield’s paper and I’ll put it in a simple way. The wisdom of the Founders cannot be reduced to limited government, and it’s a mistake to reduce it in that way. That is, it’s a mistake to take only those parts of the Founders that lean against current trends. The Federalist Papers are complicated: they are in defense of limited government, but they are also in the defense of self-government, which sometimes cuts against limited government. There’s a tension between the courts’ upholding of limited government and a strong populist impulse that rises up to legislate. I think that it is a healthy tension, and I’m probably more on the self-government side of this debate than some of our libertarian friends.

It’s a tension The Federalist recognizes and claims is resolved by the Constitution. One of the striking things is just how hard-headed the authors of The Federalist are about the tensions that are endemic to good republican government—they insist that politics is about balancing tendencies that go in different directions, not necessarily irreconcilable tendencies, but ones that cut against each other. The Federalist is not subtle or shy about the need for energy in government, which is perhaps in tension with the need for stability and for security in any government.

The Founders wanted energetic government. They wanted limited and energetic government. Martin Diamond was one of those who was involved in the 1950s