彭丽芳

The polarization of Congress, reflecting an electorate that has not been this divided since about the time of the Civil War, has led to ideological warfare between parties that directly channels the passions of their most extreme constituents and donors— precisely the type of factionalism the Founders abhorred.

国会的两极分化，反映了自内战时期以来最为分裂的选民群体，所带来的各党派之间的意识形态战争，并直接向政坛传导了两党选民和捐助者当中最极端份子的激情——而这恰恰是被国父们所摒弃的派系主义 (factionalism)。


The executive branch, meanwhile, has been transformed by the spectacle of tweeting presidents, though the presidency had broken from its constitutional restraints long before the advent of social media. During the election of 1912, the progressive populists Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson insisted that the president derived his authority directly from the people. Since then, the office has moved in precisely the direction the Founders had hoped to avoid: Presidents now make emotional appeals, communicate directly with voters, and pander to the mob.

与此同时，行政部门已经因推特治国的奇观发生了转变，不过早在社交媒体出现之前，总统一职就已经摆脱了宪法设下的限制。在1912年总统大选中，激进的民粹主义者西奥多·罗斯福 (Theodore Roosevelt，第26任美国总统) 和伍德罗·威尔逊 (Woodrow Wilson，第28任美国总统) 坚持认为总统的权力直接来源于人民。自那之后，美国总统的作为就始终与国父的期待背道而驰：时至今日，总统会向公众提出感情化的诉求，与选民直接进行沟通，并迎合暴民的所思所欲。

彭丽芳

But newspapers of the time were also plat- forms for elites to make thoughtful arguments at length, and Madison believed that the enlightened journalists he called the “literati” would ultimately promote the “commerce of ideas.” He had faith that citizens would take the time to read complicated arguments (including the essays that became The Federalist Papers), allowing levelheaded reason to spread slowly across the new republic.

但当时的报纸仍是精英们通过长篇大论进行思想碰撞的平台，而麦迪逊认为，他称之为“文人” ("literati") 的开明记者最终会促进“思想市场” ("commerce of ideas") 的运作。他相信，公民会花时间去阅读复杂的论点（包括日后集结为《联邦党人文集》的这些论文），使不盲从的理性能够在新共和国的疆域内缓慢传播开去。


JAMES MADISON DIED AT MONTPELIER, his Virginia estate, in 1836, one of the few Founding Fathers to survive into the democratic age of Andrew Jackson. Madison supported Jackson’s efforts to preserve the Union against nullification efforts in the South but was alarmed by his populist appeal in the West. What would Madison make of American democracy today, an era in which Jacksonian populism looks restrained by comparison? Madison’s worst fears of mob rule have been realized—and the cooling mechanisms he designed to slow down the formation of impetuous majorities have broken.

詹姆斯·麦迪逊于1836年在他的弗吉尼亚庄园蒙彼利埃 (Montpelier) 中逝世，也让他成为为数不多的能够活着看到安德鲁·杰克逊 (译者注：Andrew Jackson，第7任美国总统，现代民主党的创始人) 开创的民主时代的美国国父之一。麦迪逊支持杰克逊保护联邦免受南方分裂的努力，但对他在中西部挑起的民粹主义思潮感到震惊。若是麦迪逊在世，看到今天美国民主的发展令杰克逊时代的民粹主义都相形见绌，会作何感想？麦迪逊对暴民统治的最大恐惧已经成真——他设计的放缓浮躁多数派步伐的冷却机制，已然失效

彭丽芳

According to classical theory, republics could exist only in relatively small territories, where citizens knew one another personally and could assemble face-to-face. Plato would have capped the number of citizens capable of self-government at 5,040. Madison, however, thought Plato’s small-republic thesis was wrong. He believed that the ease of communication in small republics was precisely what had allowed hastily formed majorities to oppress minorities. “Extend the sphere” of a territory, Madison wrote, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more dii cult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” Madison predicted that America’s vast geography and large population would prevent passionate mobs from mobilizing. Their dangerous energy would burn out before it could inflame others.

根据古典理论，共和国只能存在于疆域相对较小的地区，在这些地方，公民个人之间能够互相熟悉，并可以面对面地召开集会。柏拉图会将自治政府的公民人数上限设置在5040人。然而，麦迪逊认为柏拉图的小共和国论点是错误的。他认为，小共和国的所谓交流便利，正是令草草形成的多数派能够压迫少数派的原因。麦迪逊写道：

扩大（共和国）疆域的范围，就会令政党和利益的多样性大大提高；这样一来总体当中的多数派形成共同动机、侵犯其他公民的权利的可能性就会降低；或者即便存在这样一个共同动机，也能阻止所有受到这一动机煽动的人发现他们所能动用的暴力，令其群体性的统一行动变得更加困难。麦迪逊预测，美国庞大的地域和人口规模可以阻止激情暴民的串联动员。他们危险的能量会在可能煽动其他人之前消散。

Of course, at the time of the country’s founding, new media technologies, including what Madison called “a circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people,” were already closing the communication gaps among the dispersed citizens of America. The popular press of the 18th and early 19th centuries was highly partisan— the National Gazette, where Madison himself published his thoughts on the media, was, since its founding in 1791, an organ of the Democratic- Republican Party and often viciously attacked the Federalists.

当然，在这个国家成立之初，新生的媒体技术，包括麦迪逊所述的“报纸在整个人民群体当中流通”，已经在缩小分散在美国各地的公民之间的沟通差距。18世纪和19世纪初的大众媒体是高度党派化的——刊载麦迪逊本人思想、成立于1791年的《国家公报》(National Gazette)，就是民主共和党 (译者注：Democratic-Republican Party，1792由麦迪逊和杰弗逊创建的美国主要政党，反对汉密尔顿领导的新联邦党，后一度执掌国会，1824年因党内政治路线发生分裂，是现代民主党和共和党的共同前身) 的一个宣传机关，经常恶毒地攻击联邦党人。

彭丽芳

To prevent factions from distorting public policy and threatening liberty, Madison resolved to exclude the people from a direct role in government. “A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction,” Madison wrote in “Federalist No. 10.” The Framers designed the American constitutional system not as a direct democracy but as a representative republic, where enlightened delegates of the people would serve the public good. They also built into the Constitution a series of cooling mechanisms intended to inhibit the formulation of passionate factions, to ensure that reasonable majorities would prevail.

为了防止派系斗争扭曲公共政策并威胁自由，麦迪逊决定将人民排除在政府的直接组成部分之外。麦迪逊在联邦党人文集第10篇中写道：一个纯粹的民主，我指的是一个由少数公民组成、并由他们亲自组建和管理政府的社会，无法找到根治派系祸端的良方。制宪者们 (Framers) 并没有将美国的宪法体系设计为一套直接民主制度，而是组建为一个代议制的共和国 (representative republic)，通过开明的民选代表为公共利益服务。他们还在宪法中加入了一系列冷却机制，旨在抑制激情派系的形成，以确保理性的多数派占据上风。（译者注：一个极富争议且常遭误解的机制，就是 filibuster “冗长发言”，也称“程序性阻挠议事”，是美国参议院的独特章程，少数派议员可以藉此阻止“多数派的暴政”，逼迫多数派改期讨论立法，需要3/5多数才能终结辩论）


The people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives, but the popular passions of the House would cool in the “Senatorial saucer,” as George Washington purportedly called it: The Senate would comprise natural aristocrats chosen by state legislators rather than elected by the people. And rather than directly electing the chief executive, the people would vote for wise electors—that is, propertied white men—who would ultimately choose a president of the highest character and most discerning judgment. The separation of powers, meanwhile, would prevent any one branch of government from acquiring too much authority. The further division of power between the federal and state governments would ensure that none of the three branches of government could claim that it alone represented the people.


人们可以直接选举众议院议员，但众议院的民众激情会在“参议院的餐盘” ("Senatorial saucer"，语出美国开国元勋乔治·华盛顿) 中冷却下来：参议院将由州立法委员们选出的自然贵族组成，而不是通过人民选举产生。选择国家元首的方式也并非直接票选，而是先由人民投票给明智的选举人——在当时意味着有私产的白人——并由他们最终选出一位品格最为高尚、判断力最为果决的总统。与此同时，三权分立 (separation of powers) 将阻止任何一支政府部门获得过多的权力。联邦政府和州政府之间的进一步分权，确保三支政府部门（译者注：即立法权、行政权、司法权）中没有一个能够声称只有自己代表人民。

彭丽芳

Madison and Hamilton believed that Athenian citizens had been swayed by crude and ambitious politicians who had played on their emotions. The demagogue Cleon was said to have seduced the assembly into being more hawkish toward Athens’s opponents in the Peloponnesian War, and even the reformer Solon canceled debts and debased the currency. In Madison’s view, history seemed to be repeating itself in America. After the Revolutionary War, he had observed in Massachusetts “a rage for paper money, for abolition of debts, for an equal division of property.” That populist rage had led to Shays’s Rebellion, which pitted a band of debtors against their creditors.

麦迪逊和汉密尔顿认为，雅典公民早已被那些操纵他们情绪的野心勃勃的政治家所左右。据说，煽动家克里昂 (Cleon) 在伯罗奔尼撒战争中诱使公民大会对雅典的对手采取更加鹰派的政策，甚至连改革家梭伦 (Solon) 也通过在大会上的雄辩，废除了全雅典的债务 (译者注：当选执政官的梭伦废除了雅典以人身偿还债务的旧习，不准债主纳借贷者为奴抵债，且恢复了过往被纳为奴者的自由) 并令货币贬值。在麦迪逊看来，历史似乎正在美国重演。独立战争结束之后，他在马萨诸塞州亲眼目睹了“对发行纸币、废除债务以及平等分割财产的愤怒。”这股民粹主义的愤怒情绪导致了谢司暴动 (Shays' Rebellion)，实质上酿成了债务人与他们的债权人之间的武装冲突。

Madison referred to impetuous mobs as factions, which he defined in “Federalist No. 10” as a group “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions arise, he believed, when public opinion forms and spreads quickly. But they can dissolve if the public is given time and space to consider long-term interests rather than short-term gratification.

麦迪逊把这些浮躁的暴民集团称为派系 (factions)，并在联邦党人文集第10篇 (Federalist No. 10) 中将之定义为“因一些共同的激情或利益冲动聚众结社，并对其他公民的权利或整个社会的永久和总体利益造成危害”的团体。他认为，当公众舆论迅速形成并传播时，派系便涌现出来；而当公众有时间和空间考虑长期利益而非短期所得时，派系就会随之消散。

彭丽芳

James Madison traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 with Athens on his mind. He had spent the year before the Constitutional Convention reading two trunkfuls of books on the history of failed democracies, sent to him from Paris by Thomas Jef erson. Madison was determined,in drafting the Constitution, to avoid the fate of those “ancient and modern confederacies,” which he believed had succumbed to rule by demagogues and mobs.

1787年赶往费城的詹姆斯·麦迪逊 (译者注：James Madison, 美国国父之一，美国宪法主起草人，第4任美国总统) ，心中想着的都是雅典。麦迪逊下定决心，要在起草宪法时避免重蹈这些“古代和现代邦联”的覆辙，他相信这些曾经伟大的国度，最终都败落在煽动家 (demagogues) 和暴民集团 (mob) 的统治之下。

Madison’s reading convinced him that direct democracies—such as the assembly in Athens, where 6,000 citizens were required for a quorum—unleashed populist passions that overcame the cool, deliberative reason prized above all by Enlightenment thinkers. “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason,” he argued in The Federalist Papers, the essays he wrote (along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) to build support for the ratii cation of the Constitution. “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”

遍览群书的麦迪逊深信，正是直接民主制度 (direct democracies) ——例如雅典的公民大会，需要6000名公民才能达到议事的最低出席人数要求 (quorum) ——所释放的民粹主义激情，蒙蔽了启蒙思想家们所褒扬的冷静审慎的理性。在他与亚历山大·汉密尔顿 (Alexander Hamilton) 和约翰·杰伊 (John Jay) 共同起草、为美国宪法奠定了理论基础的《联邦党人文集》(The Federalist Papers) 中，他写道：

在所有这些林林总总的集会中，无论参与者有着怎样的品格，激情总是会从理性手中篡夺权杖. 即便把每个雅典公民都变成苏格拉底，每次雅典公民大会最后还是会变成一群暴民的集会。