Until we read original documents like the Federalist Papers
one has no clue the intellectual, thoughtful considerations placed into
creating our Republic by the founders, including Hamelton who at age 32 wrote
Federalist #6.
…The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There
are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective
bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of
pre-eminence and dominion--the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and
safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally
operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and
competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not
less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in
private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of
leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this
class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many
instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of
some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquility to
personal advantage or personal gratification.
The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment
of a prostitute,1 at the expense of much of the blood and
treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the
SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS,2 another nation of Greece, or to avoid a
prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft
of the statuary Phidias,3 or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be
brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of
popularity,4 or from a combination of all these causes, was
the primitive author of that famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian
annals by the name of the PELOPONNESIAN war; which, after various vicissitudes,
intermissions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth…
Hamelton, segment of Federalist Papers #6, November 1787
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