republic

Hey folks, welcome to unit one, lecture three The Republic Federalism and Inequality in the United States. In this lecture we'll discuss the Republic, the US as a republic, federalism. Federalism versus con. Federalism. The different types of federalism and inequality over time. So let's get started.

Now, I know we're not in ancient Roman history or anything like that, but in order to best understand the concept of democracy, we also need to understand this concept of a republic. And the best way to do that is to go back to ancient Rome and study the Roman system for just a brief second. Now Polybius, who is a Greek hostage of Rome due to the fact that Polybius, his father, was neutral towards the Roman war against Perseus of Macedon, he ended up getting captured by Rome. He was a prisoner for 17 years, possibly a case, um, of Stockholm syndrome here, but grew to love. Rome wrote a book called The Histories, and in it he discussed how Rome's success was due to its governing system of republicanism. In that system. It wasn't a monarchy in aristocracy or a democracy that ruled the Roman Republic. Instead, they had something like the United States, a separation of powers in which the people controlled the assemblies. Aristocrats controlled the Senate, and consuls served as facilitators of law. Polybius thought this was a good system, because under a democracy you would vote for your own best self-interest. And as we've already learned, sometimes when you think about only yourself, you end up at a suboptimal position in a republic that promotes a plurality of interests since different groups of people are represented in the government. And Polybius thought this was brilliant. Now you have this mixed governing system where no one individual has all the power. Now fast forward a couple thousand years and get to the American Revolution. And the founders, they first tried to draft a constitution, which is the Articles of Confederation, as we've already learned, it fails. They get to the Constitution and they have absolutely no intention of forming a democracy. So we have Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention. And in those notes, he states that democratic communities may be unsteady and be led to action by the impulse of the moment. Okay, so the bolded portions here of this quote are what are important. Democratic communities may be unsteady and be led to action by the impulse of the moment. So what he's saying there is that a democracy is not stable, right? The impulse of the moment. So a current event or a new thing that happens will lead individuals to overreact. And so, Madison argues, if elections are open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. What he means there is that people who don't have a lot of wealth will vote to take away the wealth of folks with a lot of land. He goes on to say an agrarian law would soon take place, in other words, a law of the farmers. If these observations be just, or if I'm correct, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation or against change. Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. So Madison, who wrote the Constitution, he it's his framework that goes into law. He decides that he needs to draft a document that protects the wealthy few against the masses. Not very democratic, right? So we don't really live in a democracy, but we live in something like that Roman Republic kind of. Okay. It seems like it's getting worse and worse every day, more and more oligarchical. But folks will still argue that we live in a republic. Now, as you'll remember, when the Constitution was being debated, there were these two groups of individuals that were fighting against one another, right. Federalists and Anti-Federalists. Well, the Federalists went on to form one of the first political parties in the United States called the Federalist Party. And that Federalist Party was composed of folks like Hamilton, Adams and others who argued that the federal government needed to be strengthened in order to protect against mob rule or democracy. Adams was the only Federalist president. He later ended up becoming a Republican. Uh, but he was our first president with a party because note that George Washington never had a political party. Okay. These Federalists were afraid of democracy. And these folks are the ones who crafted the first set of laws that we all abide by still to this day. The other political party kind of came out of the Anti-Federalists, but also peeled some of the Federalists as well, uh, and formed this other party called the Republican Party. In some textbooks, you'll see them referred to as the Democratic Republicans. But at the time they were just called the Republican Party. Now, this is kind of confusing because this political party, this Republican Party, is actually the predecessor of the modern Democratic Party. Okay. So there was a split in 1824, which was Jackson's election that broke this into the modern Democratic Party and the Whig Party. Uh, the GOP, the Republican Party of today was born out of a different movement. Okay, so I know that's confusing, but they're the Republicans are in some textbooks, the Democratic Republicans. This was this group was composed of Madison, Jefferson and others who argued that states rights also needed to be protected over the interests of the national government. So, noting that Madison is here, you should keep in mind that Madison was the guy who drafted the Constitution. And a little bit later he decided, you know what? Let's make sure states rights are also protected, not just the national government. Okay? This party, this Republican Party, was responsible for the era of the common man. Okay. There's a series of books called A Very Short Introduction to Something. And in a Very Short Introduction to Democracy, the author talks about this era of the common man who was this man who could work his own land with his own hands, could read a law book and tracks on the issues of the day. Or, in other words, he paid attention to the news. He could present a case competently, in a lower court or in a town meeting. So he was able to defend himself. He knew the laws, right. And he was also a civic citizen, because he participated in the political system by going to town meetings and in carrying or possessed arms by constitutional right to defend the common liberties if need be. This common man could not vote until Jackson was president. As we learned in an earlier lecture, you needed property in order to vote. So if you were a common person, a you or me, you did not have the right to vote, right? The rights of citizenship were not extended to all Americans. Okay, we already learned that most women could not vote. Most people of color could not vote. And, uh, if you were not wealthy, you could not vote either. Okay. When Jackson became president, he decided that he would remove property requirements for voting so all adult white males could vote. That Republican Party worked to ensure that there was more, uh, I guess you could say, uh, quality with a question mark in our system because they opened up the vote to more classes of people. Of course, it's not full equality because women didn't have the right to vote. People of color did not have the right to vote. But change in the United States has been extremely slow. And so in the 1820s, you had a major change. Now you had no longer a property requirement for the right to vote. Okay. This Republican Party also argued that the Federalists were too monarchical and or too aristocratic. So they focused on the national government too much and didn't pay attention to the worries of the states.

Now enter our political system of a republic and all the different types of laws that we have. We don't have one individual or one level of government that makes laws, right. We have this system called federalism, in which governing authority is split or shared between the national government or the central government, uh, or the federal government, whatever you want to call it, and it's subordinate units. In other words, we're talking about, uh, the states, right? States, cities, towns, local governments. Okay. So national government may make some laws and local governments make some laws. In this system of federalism, there are benefits and detriments on the good side of the coin. Each state has some authority when it comes to making. That means that states function as little laboratories of democracy, which is in some cases good for the country. I'll give you an example. So a few years ago, a little over a decade ago, I guess, now, um, a couple of states, Colorado, Washington, they all decided that they wanted to try an experiment. What would happen if they legalized the recreational usage of marijuana? Now, let's say the entire country decided to make marijuana legal for recreational use. And there were some horrible consequences that would affect the entire country. Right? But if just a couple states decide, hey, let's try this and see what happens, okay? So they do it. They legalize the recreational usage of marijuana. They see that they collect more in taxes. Crime rates don't differ too much. Consumption rates don't differ too much. The only sort of negative thing that comes out of legalizing the recreational usage of marijuana is that it's hard to find Hot Cheetos in grocery stores. So a few other states, like California and others decide, hey, we want in on that legalized recreational marijuana money. Let's do it too. And this policy of recreational usage of marijuana being legal starts to diffuse. More and more states start to pick it up. Right. Now, that's a good thing because if something works, other states can follow suit. If something doesn't, other states learn, hey, we need to not do this thing right. So that's a benefit. States act like laboratories of democracy. Another benefit is that federalism allows for proportional and geographic representation. I'll give you another example here. Um, when I was in graduate school, I lived in Irvine, and I think I said this before, but I'm Iranian and there's a huge Iranian diaspora that lives in Irvine. So it's one of the largest Iranian American communities or Iranian communities outside of Iran in the entire world. And if you drive through Irvine during March, you'll see signs up that this that the city itself puts up that says Happy Persian New Year or Happy Iranian New Year, because Persian New Year is the vernal equinox. It's around March 20th, March 21st, March 22nd, every single year. One of those dates usually. But the first day of spring is the Persian New Year. Okay. Now, a local government that recognizes a significant portion of its, um, constituents are Iranian. Representing them by making them feel welcome is a good thing, right? So that geographic representation, that culture, that ethnicity, uh, that nationality, whatever getting recognized means that those Iranians feel like the city cares about them. So that makes them feel like this place cares, right? And that's a good thing. It's always good to feel like as a constituent, like your government cares about you. Okay. So that's another benefit to federalism. But of course, as with all things, not everything is always just good. Federalism also has some detriments, like policy disharmony. Now, yes, it may be legal to consume marijuana recreationally in California, but you're not allowed to get on a plane and take marijuana with you even if you're flying within the state. Right. Because federal laws say no. Federal law says recreational usage of marijuana is not legal. So we have this policy disharmony where the state says, yeah, it's okay, but the national government says, no, it's not okay. And not every state says it's okay. Right. So that can create confusion for constituents because they don't know what law to follow. Right. And then another one that may be a little bit more nuanced is federalism is often used to conceal racism under the guise of states rights. And I'll let Lee Atwater, who was an adviser to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, discuss the southern strategy of states rights. How you start out and not your own on.

You start out in 1954 by saying never, never, never. By 1968, you keep saying, you got that hurts you back. So you say stuff like a fourth person states rights and all that stuff, and you get so abstract. Now you're talking about cutting taxes and all of these things you're talking about are totally economic things in the byproduct of the middle class get hurt worse in life. And subconsciously, maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that if it is getting out of abstract, in that coded, uh, that we're doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. Uh, you follow me because obviously sitting around saying, uh, we want to cut taxes, we want to cut this, and we want is much more abstract. And then even the busing thing.

And a hell of a lot more abstract than ever, do you know? So anyway, you look at it, race is coming on the back burner. All right. So this strategy was a major Republican campaigning tactic to use dog whistles to avoid being overtly racist, but instead be covertly racist. Uh, if you're interested, look up dog whistle politics. You can learn more about this. But basically what Lee Atwater says is that in the 50s, it was perfectly acceptable in the American public to be overtly racist, to yell racial epithets at people of color. But after the civil rights movement, it was harder to be overtly racist. So instead you had to change the argument to still hurt people of color more than whites, right? You had to put it in a different language, and instead of being overtly racist, you would need to use things like, hey, let's put this back to states rights, okay?

Now, switching to this system of federalism actually addresses problems under the Articles of Confederation that no longer exist. When the founders decided to redo the AOC and form the constitution under the Articles of Confederation, as you'll recall states where the supreme power under the Constitution this gets flipped and the federal government is the supreme power, right? A stronger central government is better equipped to deal with conflict, to deal with struggles, to deal with wars. And in the United States, we now have a system where the national government is supreme over the states in some areas. Right? The federal government actually holds enumerated powers or specifically listed powers, and the states hold reserved powers. So there's a couple different clauses of the Constitution that are important here. The first is, uh, article six, clause two, which is known as the Supremacy Clause. That's this Constitution and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land. And the judges in every state shall be bound there by anything in the Constitution or laws of any state, to the contrary notwithstanding. Okay. What that basically means is that the national government is supreme over state laws or local laws. The second important clause of the Constitution is the full Faith and credit Clause, coming from article four, section one. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other state, and the Congressman by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect there of this clause requires each state to respect the laws and institutions of every other state. So if one state enters into a contract with an individual, every other state has to recognize that contract. So if you can get, uh, same sex marriage in California, every other state has to give you the benefits of that marriage, even if that state does not allow same sex marriage. This is one of the reasons why same sex marriage is legal in the United States. Um, in every state now, right. It's because of the full faith and credit clause. One of the major reasons why. Okay, so in the system of federalism, the national government is supreme. It has enumerated or specifically listed powers, and the states get everything else or they have reserved powers. Now, federalism isn't just one system. There are actually different types of federalism. So let's talk about that. First, let's talk about dual federalism or layer cake federalism. This is a system in which power is split kind of cleanly or evenly between the federal government and its subordinate units, okay. So in dual federalism, you know which level of government is making the laws. It's clear it's a national law or it's a state or local law. Okay.

The second type of federalism is cooperative federalism. Cooperative federalism. This is a system in which the federal government uses positive sanctions to harmonize public policy. This is also known as a marble cake. Federalism. Okay. Another way of saying a positive sanction is a reward. Like a carrot, right? A grant like a categorical grant, like Medicaid, for instance. States received money for one specific purpose and must spend the money on that particular issue. And the federal government could say, hey, we may not be able to make this law, but we can give you a bunch of money if you decide to make this law. Okay, so this is the carrot. And of course, with the carrot comes the stick that's regulated federalism. This is the other type of marble cake. Federalism. This is when the federal government uses negative sanctions to harmonize public policy. So you'll notice that cooperative federalism and regulated federalism have almost the exact same definition. The only difference is positive and negative. Right. Negative federalism would be the stick. Right. Unfunded mandates, direct orders. Uh, things like drinking laws. No Child Left Behind when George Bush was president or, uh, DUI legislation. Those are, um, the federal government using negative sanctions to harmonize public policy. Okay. So this is, again, another type of marble cake. Federalism. So dual federalism powers split or shared. It's clean. Everybody knows which level of government is making the laws. But under cooperative and regulated federalism marble cake federalism, it's a little bit more uncertain why a law is being made. Is it because the policy actually matters, or because the state is getting a bunch of money, or because the state is forced to comply by the national government? Okay. And then a final type of federalism is horizontal federalism, which is the attempt to harmonize the actions, institutions, and laws of each state, which is regulated by article four, which we just learned about, um, on the previous slide. Right. Now, when we discuss the founding, we learned about the institution of slavery and how, uh, southern states benefited so greatly from that system. Right. Well, American political development, our history is marred by racism, by sexism, by gender, sexual discrimination, by ethnocentrism, etc., etc., etc.. And even though laws have changed over time to improve the situation. Okay. Like with the 15th amendment, people of color earn the right to vote in 1870. Laws change. But culture takes a little bit longer to change, right? Jim Crow laws still segregated people of color and classified them as second class citizens. Right? So even though the 15th amendment passed and people of color could technically vote 1870 onward, we still had poll taxes. We still had literacy tests. We still engaged in oppressive tactics to prevent people of color from being treated as equal citizens. Right? Um, or take, for instance, Plessy versus Ferguson, which said, as long as you have two separate institutions that are quote unquote equal. That's okay. You can have a whites only drinking fountain and a colored people drinking fountain. That's okay, as long as they're supposedly equal. Okay. Of course, over time, with some court cases, uh, this started to get challenged, most famously in brown versus board. But actually before that, Mendez versus Westminster, just our our neighbors over here in Westminster, um, about a decade before Brown versus board, the Mendez family was denied the ability to register in the local school because they were Mexican-American. They challenged that. And a federal judge said, you can no longer segregate the schools. Right. Which went on. Brown versus board. Thurgood Marshall used a lot of the same arguments in Mendez versus Westminster to win Brown versus board, which eliminated, uh, the, um, separate school districts. Right. Or the separate schools, the whites only schools and the quote unquote colored schools came. But just because the law changed, just because Brown versus board was decided didn't mean that all of a sudden, it was easy for people of color to attend schools that were formerly whites only. Right. Uh, one of the most famous examples is the case of the little Rock nine. And on the page for today, there's an excerpt from a documentary called eyes on the Prize that you need to watch. So make sure you take a look at that to see the story of the little Rock nine. Okay. Or take, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Right. The Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act prohibits racial discrimination in voting. But we still have a voting gap in the United States. We still have people of color being treated differently from whites. Just because laws change doesn't mean culture changes all of a sudden along with it. Right? Racism is something that takes these different forms. It weasels its way into everything in society. Right now, I don't want to give you these definitions just yet, but instead I want you to read an excerpt from a book called Black Power. In that book, the authors will discuss the difference between overt and covert racism. Overt racism is like individual racism, or in some cases, prejudice. And covert racism is like institutional racism. So take a look at that chapter. Make sure you read it. There will be questions on the quiz. Uh, from chapter one of Black Power. Okay.

Or take, for example, the 19th amendment. In 1920, women earned the right to vote with the 19th amendment. But just because women now have the right to vote. Does that mean that patriarchy is gone? Of course not. Right? Patriarchy still prevents women from having meaningful participation in society. Right. There are pay differentials. There's a glass ceiling. There's unequal representation in government. So only about a fifth of our elected representatives are women. The overwhelming majority are men. Um, and if you look at the Lgbtqia+ community and they face vastly more discrimination than cisgender heterosexual individuals, particularly for trans individuals, they, um, can oftentimes have difficulties securing, uh, proper ID, right, because their gender marker on their ID may not match their presentation, which can have, uh, a lot of repercussions, particularly when it comes to things like housing, work, health care and more. Right. Uh, so just because again, one more time, just because laws change doesn't mean culture changes along with it. Okay. All right. Hopefully you have a little bit of a better understanding of federalism. In our next lecture we'll look at political ideologies in American government. In particular, we'll look at conservatism. We'll look at liberalism. And then one that's more budding in the United States, which is democratic socialism. So I'll see you in unit one lecture for political ideologies in American government.