Nota bene: this is my last blog post (for now) on “the paradox of politics”.

In my previous post, we saw James Madison’s ingenious solution to the problem of factions and the tyranny of public opinion: more factions, more opinions — “extend the sphere” in order to allow for more factions and for more opinions so that they all cancel each other out. But does this Madisonian solution really work? Take, for example, the last sentence of the next-to-last paragraph of Federalist #10 (reprinted in Cohen 2018, p. 326). There, Madison provides three specific examples of “improper or wicked” projects that he hopes his extended sphere will avoid:

“A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.” (p. 326)

Paper money, the abolition of debts, and an equal division of property! The irony of these particular examples cannot be denied. Paper money? Check what’s in your wallet or purse! Abolition of debts? Our previous president, Joe Biden, approved a total of $188.8 billion in student loan forgiveness for 5.3 million borrowers while he was in office. (See here, for example.) An equal division of property? A new generation of populist politicians, like NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, have proposed a “wealth tax” on millionaires (see here), and what is a wealth tax but yet another step toward socialism?

Above and beyond these three examples, I will conclude this series of blog posts on the paradox of politics with a contemporary example of Madison’s extended sphere: social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram contain a cacophony of voices; they are the ultimate extended sphere. But does social media make us or the world better? Should we censor or “regulate” social media platforms (see here, for a recent example) to weed out all the false, dangerous, or harmful content one finds there, or do censorship and regulation produce worse outcomes than the evils they are designed to remedy? All I can say (for now) is that the law-liberty dilemma is alive and well in the 21st century!