Founders’ Warnings, Today’s Reality

Power doesn’t fail by accident; it fails when meaning gets soft and speed outruns scrutiny. We take a hard look at how the founders engineered a system to restrain ambition and why modern politics treats those restraints as defects to be bypassed. From Madison’s cold-eyed diagnosis of factions in Federalist 10 to the deliberate friction of Federalist 47–51, we trace how separation of powers protects liberty by slowing our worst impulses and forcing real accountability.

We also set the record straight on Hamilton’s Federalist 70. “Energy in the executive” wasn’t a love letter to ego; it was a demand for clarity so citizens know exactly who is responsible when things go wrong. When responsibility diffuses across councils, task forces, and alphabet agencies, accountability evaporates. That’s not constitutional strength—it’s bureaucratic cover. Along the way, we bring the often-ignored Anti‑Federalists back into focus. Patrick Henry and George Mason weren’t anti‑America; they were anti‑amnesia, and their pressure gave us the Bill of Rights, the written limits that make emergency shortcuts harder.

This is a conversation about original public meaning, not nostalgia. Meaning fixes the law so power can’t reinterpret restraint out of existence. It’s also a reminder that rights come with duties: speech with tolerance, due process with acceptance, liberty with discipline. We connect the founders’ intellectual roots—Locke, Montesquieu, Blackstone—to today’s temptations toward consolidation, permanent emergencies, and policy written for applause over outcomes. If you’re tired of outrage theater and hungry for first principles, you’ll find a steady, clear path back to civic competence and constitutional self‑government.

Subscribe, share with a friend who quotes the founders, and leave a review with the one restraint you think Congress should restore first. Your voice helps keep real accountability—and real conversation—alive.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening: Constitution As Machine
• 3:28 Madison’s Diagnosis Of Faction
• 9:05 Separation Of Powers And Friction
• 10:45 Sponsor: From Iraq To The State House
• 12:00 Founders’ Roundtable Satire
• 20:40 Hamilton’s Executive Accountability
• 26:05 Anti‑Federalists And The Bill Of Rights
• 31:30 Letters, Virtue, And Original Meaning

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

You're listening to the Walt Blackman Show, hosted by combat veteran and constitutional conservative Walt Blackman. No fluff, no filters. Just real talk for citizens who still believe the Constitution matters. If you're ready to move past slogans, tribalism, and political theater, welcome. The Walt Blackman Show starts now.

SPEAKER_02: 0:26

Welcome back to the Walt Blackman Show. I'm Walt Blackman, combat veteran, legislator, and your steady voice in the Arizona Desert, and someone who believes self-government only works when citizens can think clearly for themselves even under pressure. This show focuses on ideas, accountability, and the constitutional guardrails that protect a free republic. So let's get to work. Have you ever noticed something unsettling? The people who scream, the founders, the loudest are almost never the people who've actually read them, not quoted them, read them, cover to cover. No memes, no highlight reels, no influencer translation that turns the Constitution into a horoscope you consult when you're losing an argument. So here's the question I want you to sit with right now before we even warm up the engine. If the founders walked into modern Congress today, would they recognize it as the solution they designed? Or would they start looking for the nearest exit, like the building just caught fire? Because the Constitution wasn't written by men who trusted power. It was written by men who distrusted power the way you distrust a raccoon near an open trash can, because you've seen what happens when you look away for 10 seconds. They designed a system that assumes human nature will do what human nature always does: reach, grab, justify, repeat. And I know, I know, some of you are already offended. Good. That means you're awake. Because the Constitution is not a vibe, it's not a feeling, it's not a warm, patriotic candle you light while tweeting that everyone you disagree with is a tyrant. It's a machine, a deliberate, engineered system built to restrain people who are absolutely convinced they're right. Now, here's the part that makes modern Congress break out in hives. The founders didn't build government to be easy. They built it to be difficult to abuse. And every time someone complains that it's too slow or too divided, what they're really saying is restraint has become inconvenient, which is the first step in the long, boring, repeatable history of liberty getting quietly shoved into a closet. So today we're going to do something radical. We're going to stop treating the founders like decorative wallpaper and start treating them like what they actually were. Warning labels. And we're going to use the sources people cite, but rarely read the Federalist Papers. Hamilton, Madison, J. The short focused essays that are basically the founders looking into the future and saying, here's exactly how you'll mess this up. The Mentor Classics edition is fine. The Gideon edition is even better because it follows the original structure. Either way, the argument remains the same. Structure over emotion, restraint over impulse, accountability over vibes, and yes, we're going to let the anti-Federalists speak too, because they weren't enemies of the Republic. They were skeptics of concentrated power. And that skepticism helped give us the Bill of Rights. The founders were not unanimous, and that's the point. All right, buckle up. Let's start where Madison starts. Factions. James Madison did not write Federalist 10 because he was bored. He wrote it because he was terrified, calmly terrified, which is the most dangerous kind. Federalist 10 is not an inspirational speech. It's an autopsy report, written about a patient who's still walking around pretending everything is fine. Madison explains that factions are inevitable. They aren't an accident. They are a feature of human nature, different interests, different passions, different incentives. People will organize, they will demand, they will punish dissent. They will claim they represent the people. And the more certain they are, the more dangerous they become. Now, if you're listening to that and thinking, wow, that sounds like modern politics, congratulations. You can still recognize patterns. That puts you ahead of, well, a distressing number of elected officials. Madison's point is not factions are bad because I dislike conflict. His point is factions are dangerous because they can trample rights. A faction that gains power will use it. A majority can become a tyrant just as easily as a king, sometimes faster, because kings at least have the decency to look like villains. And what does modern Congress do? It incentivizes factions like it's running a rewards program. Congratulations on your outrage. Here's a fundraising email. Here's a cable segment. Here's a committee assignment. Here's a blue check and a sense of moral superiority. Madison designed a republic large enough to make it harder for factions to dominate and structured enough to force ambition to collide with ambition. He did not design a system where every policy disagreement becomes a holy war and every compromise is treated like treason. That's not constitutional government. That's reality television with subpoenas. Here's the funniest part. Funny in the way a house fire is interesting. You know, modern keyboard constitutionalists will quote Madison when it helps them, then immediately behave like a faction with a microphone. They'll shout about liberty while demanding control. They'll invoke rights while ignoring duties. They'll wave the constitution like a magic talisman and then get furious when the constitution restrains them too. Madison would look at that and say, yes, this is why I built the breaks. So what are the breaks? Separation of powers. And Madison explains that too in the essays that make impatient people foam at the mouth. Federalist 47 through 51. James Madison did not write Federalist 10 because he was bored. He wrote it because he was terrified, calmly terrified, which is the most dangerous kind. Federalist 10 is not an inspirational speech. It's an autopsy report, written about a patient who's still walking around pretending everything is fine. Madison explains that factions are inevitable. They aren't an accident. They are a feature of human nature. Different interests, different passions, different incentives. People will organize, they will demand, they will punish dissent, they will claim they represent the people. And the more certain they are, the more dangerous they become. Now, if you're listening to that and thinking, wow, that sounds like modern politics, congratulations, you can still recognize patterns. That puts you ahead of, well, a distressing number of elected officials. Madison's point is not factions are bad because I dislike conflict. His point is factions are dangerous because they can trample rights. A faction that gains power will use it. A majority can become a tyrant just as easily as a king, sometimes faster because kings at least have the decency to look like villains. And what does modern Congress do? It incentivizes factions like it's running a rewards program. Congratulations on your outrage. Here's a fundraising email, here's a cable segment, here's a committee assignment, here's a blue check, and a sense of moral superiority. Madison designed a republic large enough to make it harder for factions to dominate and structured enough to force ambition to collide with ambition. He did not design a system where every policy disagreement becomes a holy war and every compromise is treated like treason. That's not constitutional government. That's reality television with subpoenas. Here's the funniest part. Funny in the way a house fire is interesting. Modern keyboard constitutionalists will quote Madison when it helps them, then immediately behave like a faction with a microphone. They'll shout about liberty while demanding control. They'll invoke rights while ignoring duties. They'll wave the Constitution like a magic talisman, and then get furious when the Constitution restrains them too. Madison would look at that and say, yes, this, this is why I built the breaks. So what are the breaks? Separation of powers. And Madison explains that too in the essays that make impatient people foam at the mouth, Federalist 47 through 51. If you want to understand why the Constitution is not a vibe, read Federalist 47 through 51, and then ask yourself why modern politics treats friction like a defect. Madison's logic is brutal in its simplicity. If you combine legislative, executive, and judicial power in the same hands, you get tyranny, not maybe, you get it, because power concentrates, excuses multiply, and accountability evaporates. So the Constitution separates powers not to make government efficient, but to make oppression difficult. It forces branches to argue, to slow each other down, to demand justification, to expose motives that gridlock everyone complains about. That is often liberty doing its job. And then Madison drops the line that should be tattooed on the forehead of every political philosopher with a podcast. Men are not angels, not might not be angels, are not. Therefore, the system assumes ambition will exist, and it uses ambition as a weapon against itself. Ambition must counteract ambition. Which brings me to modern Congress, where ambition doesn't counteract ambition, it forms a coalition and sells merch. The Constitution was built to prevent fast tyrannies. The modern demand is always speed. Do it now, pass it now, act now, show results now. But speed is what you want when you're about to do something foolish and you don't want anyone to stop you. And when someone says we can't wait for process, what they often mean is, I don't want the system to tell me no. Hold up. Before we dive back into the show, I've got something you need to hear. If you're into stories that challenge you, push you, and leave you fired up to lead, this one's for you.

SPEAKER_00: 10:55

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SPEAKER_02: 11:44

All right, let's get back to the conversation. You're listening to the Walt Blackman show, and it's just getting good. And that's when you should hear Madison clearing his throat from beyond the grave. Because the founders did not build a system for saints, they built a system for people, people with incentives, people with egos, people with blind spots, people who, given enough authority, start believing the rules are for everyone else. Now, the moment you say that out loud, someone will throw a tantrum and scream, so you want a weak government. No, that's Hamilton's cue. And Hamilton shows up with Federalist 70, the argument modern America has managed to misunderstand in both directions at once. So let's put this plainly: the Constitution is not a mood. It's not poetry, it's not a living horoscope. It is a machine designed to restrain power, slow impulse, and force accountability. And since Congress loves quoting the founders, let's do something radical. Let's let the founders respond. Madison. Gentlemen, I have reviewed the present Congress, and I would like the record to reflect that everything I warned about has occurred faster than expected. Hamilton. Faster? James, they've managed to combine incompetence with confidence. That takes effort. I argued for energy in the executive, not caffeine-fueled improvisation, followed by press conferences explaining why nothing worked. Washington, I left after two terms so no one would confuse leadership with entitlement. Apparently that lesson expired like milk left in the sun. Adams, milk, sir, this is vinegar. I warned that democracy without virtue would devolve into spectacle. And now legislation is written for applause, not outcomes. We used to fear mobs in the streets. Now they're seated in committee hearings. Jefferson. Let us be fair. The people are sovereign, Adams. Yes, and some of them shouldn't be trusted with a toaster, let alone unchecked power. Madison, the Constitution assumes factions exist. It does not assume they should be rewarded with fundraising emails. Hamilton. Exactly. Federalist 10 was not a suggestion. It was a diagnosis. Factions are inevitable, dangerous, irrational, which is why we built a system to slow them down. Now they've installed turbochargers and call it progress, Washington. Why does every disagreement now require a crisis? Hamilton. Because emergencies excuse shortcuts and shortcuts excuse power grabs. I explained this repeatedly with footnotes. Jefferson. They do quote us often. Madison, out of context. Adams. Always out of context. They quote liberty while demanding control. They quote rights while ignoring responsibility. They quote us the way drunk men quote scripture. Washington, I notice no one speaks of restraint anymore. Hamilton, restraint doesn't pull well. Madison, nor does separation of powers, apparently. Federalist 51 states plainly that ambition must counteract ambition, not collaborate, not unify, counteract. The branches are supposed to frustrate each other. That is the design, Jefferson. And yet they complain the system is slow, Adams. Yes, because speed is what you want when you're about to do something foolish. Hamilton. I argued for a strong executive so the nation wouldn't collapse during crisis. I did not argue for an executive branch so large it could invade a small country and lose the paperwork. Washington. Who is responsible now? Madison, everyone, which means no one. Adams. Bureaucracy, the cowardice of power spread thin. Jefferson. What troubles me most is the language. They speak of rights without duties. Adams, that's because duties require discipline, and discipline requires virtue. I said plainly, this Constitution is made for a moral and religious people. Remove the moral part, and you are left with parchment and hope. Hamilton, hope is not a governing strategy, Washington, nor is outrage, Madison. Yet outrage now substitutes for deliberation, Jefferson. They claim the Constitution is living. Adams, so is a virus. Hamilton. If the Constitution is alive, it still has bones, structure, limits, and it does not change meaning because someone dislikes the result. Madison. Meaning is fixed so liberty can endure. If meaning is negotiable, power always wins. Washington. When we feared tyranny, we did not imagine it would arrive waving our own words while ignoring their substance. Jefferson, what what would you have them do? Adams. Read. Hamilton. Slow down. Madison, argue honestly. Washington. Serve, then leave. Jefferson. And remember that liberty is not permission. It is responsibility exercised under law. Adams. Tell me, gentlemen, do they still teach the people how this system works? Madison. No. They teach them how to feel about it. Hamilton. Then the outcome is inevitable. Washington. A republic can survive ignorance only briefly. Adams. And stupidity never governs alone. It brings friends. Jefferson. So the question is not whether the system has failed, Madison, but whether the people still understand it, Hamilton. Because the Constitution cannot save a nation determined to misunderstand it, Washington. And liberty cannot survive a Congress that believes restraint is optional. So here is the question we leave behind for anyone still listening. If the founders designed a system to restrain power, why does modern Congress treat restraint as oppression? Because next time we will speak plainly about liberty, democracy, and why we feared the crowd as much as the crown. And if that makes you uncomfortable, and that's what the founders had to say before being ignored again, good. Alexander Hamilton did not argue for a strong executive because he wanted a king. He argued for a strong executive because he wanted someone you could actually blame. This is the part that modern governance pretends not to understand, usually while hiding behind a press release written by a subcommittee that answers to a task force that reports to a panel, no one elected. Federalist 70 is Hamilton explaining very patiently that energy in the executive is essential to good government. Energy, not ego, accountability, not celebrity, visibility, not mystique, one president, one office, one chain of responsibility. Because when power is spread so thin that no one can be held responsible, what you don't get is fairness. You get evasion. Hamilton understood something that modern Congress treats like an urban legend. The fastest way to kill accountability is to dilute responsibility. If everyone is involved, no one is guilty. If every decision is collective, every failure is accidental. And if every failure is accidental, then no one ever needs to resign, apologize, or explain themselves like an adult. Hamilton wanted what every serious organization eventually learns the hard way: one throat to choke. Not because he enjoyed choking, because clarity matters. When something goes wrong, you should know exactly where to look, not at a thousand committees, not at a regulatory fog machine, not at an alphabet soup of agencies pointing at each other like Spider-Man memes. Now watch modern government do the opposite. Congress loves complexity because complexity creates cover. A thousand pages, a hundred exceptions, 17 waivers, three emergency authorities quietly renewed every year because no one wants to admit they're still there. When citizens ask, who decided this? The answer is always a shrug, dressed up as procedure. Hamilton warned us about this. He said plural executives obscure responsibility. Invite delay. Councils diffuse blame. Energy disappears, but power doesn't. It just relocates somewhere darker and less accountable. That's not constitutional strength, that's bureaucratic cowardice. And here's the part that really upsets people who only skim Federalist 70. Hamilton paired executive energy with constitutional restraint. He did not want an executive unchecked by law. He wanted an executive constrained by law, but unmistakably responsible to the people. Strength without accountability is tyranny. Accountability without strength is paralysis. Hamilton wanted neither. Modern politics somehow managed to achieve both. So when you hear someone invoke Hamilton to justify unchecked authority, they've misunderstood him. And when you hear someone reject Hamilton because they fear authority altogether, they've misunderstood him too. Hamilton's argument is about responsibility, period. Because here's the rule he understood, and we keep forgetting. If responsibility is diluted, accountability is denied. Now let's talk about the people modern politics loves to pretend were wrong, the anti-federalists. Patrick Henry, George Mason, Brutus, Cato. These men were not anti-America. They were anti-amnesia. They remembered exactly what centralized power does when it's left to its own good intentions. Patrick Henry didn't oppose the Constitution because he hated unity. He opposed it because he had already lived under distant authority that promised restraint and delivered control. He didn't trust power because he understood momentum. Power does not need bad intentions to become dangerous. It only needs excuses. George Mason refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked explicit protections, not vibes, protections, written, clear, binding. He didn't say, trust me, he said, write it down. Which, coincidentally, is what every serious adult says when money, liberty, or authority is involved. The Anti-Federalists lost the ratification fight, but they won the Constitution, because without their pressure, there is no Bill of Rights. The first Ten Amendments exist because these men assumed government would push too far eventually. And history has rewarded that assumption every single time. The funniest part, funny in a bleak gallows humor way, is that modern politics dismisses the anti-federalists while behaving exactly like the authority they feared. Trust us, they say, this is temporary, this is necessary, this is for your safety. These are always the last words spoken before limits quietly disappear. The Bill of Rights is not decorative. It is not a list of suggestions. It is the written embodiment of anti-federalist paranoia, and paranoia, it turns out, was justified because rights not written down are rights waiting to be reinterpreted. So when someone tells you the anti-federalists were alarmists, remember this. Every right you still have today exists because someone refused to trust power and demanded it be restrained in ink. If you want to stop treating the founders like marble statues, read their letters. Because private correspondence is where the fear leaks out. John Adams writes like a man who knows exactly how fragile democracy is. He does not romanticize the people. He worries about them constantly. He worries about mobs, passions, ignorance, and the eternal human desire to replace responsibility with enthusiasm. Jefferson oscillates between hope and dread, like a man staring at the horizon, wondering whether the storm is going to miss him or hit him square in the face. He believed in liberty, but he knew liberty could be abused by the very people claiming to defend it. And Washington, Washington didn't want power. He endured it. His letters read like a man carrying a burden because no one else would carry it carefully enough. He wanted to go home. He wanted normalcy. Instead, he stayed because duty demanded it. These were not men intoxicated by authority. They were exhausted by it. They didn't assume the Republic would survive automatically. They assumed it would fail without constant attention, restraint, and virtue. The Constitution was written by people who were afraid, not irrationally afraid, but historically informed afraid. And that fear is baked into the structure, which is why ignoring it is not optimism. It's negligence. Here's where modern constitutional debates go off the rails. Meaning, Brian McClanahan reminds us of something radical. Words meant something when they were written, not emotionally, publicly, legally, historically. The Constitution does not mean whatever feels morally satisfying this week. It means what the ratifying public understood it to mean. That's not nostalgia. That's how contracts work. If meaning can change whenever sentiment changes, then law ceases to restrain power. This is where living constitution arguments quietly smuggle in authority. If meaning is fluid, then interpretation belongs to whoever has the microphone, the robe, or the majority vote. And once meaning is negotiable, power always wins. The original meaning is not about freezing society, it's about freezing power. You can amend the constitution. That process exists. What you can't do without undermining the entire project is reinterpret restraint out of existence because it's inconvenient, meaning isn't a mood, and treating it like one is how republics quietly dissolve without anyone ever voting to end them. Thomas G. West makes modern politics deeply uncomfortable by reminding us that rights do not exist in isolation. They come paired with duties. Liberty requires responsibility, the way credit requires payment. Natural rights are not permission slips. They are freedoms ordered by reason. You have the right to speak, but also the duty to tolerate speech you despise. You have due process, but also the obligation to accept outcomes you dislike. You have liberty, but not license. Modern politics wants rights without duties, the way people want credit cards without bills. It works for a while, then reality shows up. Civilization on credit eventually comes due, and when it does, the bill is always paid by liberty. The founders rejected two extremes, theocracy and moral nihilism. Daniel Dreisbach and Mark David Hall explain this clearly. The founders did not want government-run religion, but they also did not believe self-government could survive without moral restraint. They assumed a people capable of governing themselves internally. Because if people refuse self-governance, external governance becomes inevitable. Self-government requires self-governance. That is not theology, that is sociology. When virtue collapses, law expands. Not because someone planned it, but because chaos demands order and power is always happy to oblige. The founders didn't invent liberty, they inherited it and defended it. John Locke taught them natural rights precede government. Montesquieu taught them separation of powers prevents tyranny. Algernon Sidney taught them resistance to arbitrary authority. Blackstone taught them the common law tradition that binds liberty to precedent. These were not slogans, these were warnings. The founders were students of failure. They studied republics that collapsed and tried desperately not to repeat the experiment badly. When you ignore their intellectual inheritance, you don't modernize the Constitution. You amputate it. If you want depth, this is where the adults are. Gordon Wood explains how the American Republic was actually created, not mythologically but structurally. Middlecoff places the revolution in a human context. Mansfield writes about executive power and virtue without flinching. These scholars don't sell rage. They sell understanding, and understanding is always in short supply. Then separation of powers. Now consolidation with better branding. Then executive accountability. Now bureaucratic invisibility, and then rights paired with duties. Now entitlements paired with outrage, and then federalism. Now one size fits all mandates. Then debate, now cancellation, then amendment, now reinterpretation, then restraint, now emergency, then liberty, now permission with conditions. Each contradiction is constitutional erosion disguised as progress. Liberty does not require martyrs nearly as much as it requires adults. Adults who read, adults who understand restraint, adults who accept that inconvenience is the price of freedom. And if you're still here, if you made it this far, then you're exactly who this show is for. You can find the Walt Blackman show wherever serious conversations still exist. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube Music. New episodes drop every Monday because constitutional government doesn't survive on viral clips, it survives on sustained attention. And if you want to understand what it looks like to carry an oath from the battlefield into public office, how theory collides with responsibility when decisions stop being academic, you'll find that story in my book, From Iraq to the State House. It's available online and through major booksellers, because ideas matter, but lived responsibility matters more. The Constitution will not save itself. The Constitution does not require citizens to live in a constant state of outrage. It assumes something far more demanding: that a free people are capable of restraint, discernment, and independent judgment. Self-government depends on citizens who can tell the difference between persuasion and manipulation, between argument and emotional coercion. And let's be honest, if you leave every conversation angrier than you entered it, that's not political awareness. That's someone else renting space in your head. This show isn't here to inflame you, recruit you, or lock you into borrowed certainty. It's here to slow the moment down, return to first principles, and give you enough clarity to recognize when you're being pushed emotionally instead of persuaded rationally. So I leave you with this. This show is designed to leave listeners calmer, steadier, and harder to manipulate, not angrier or more certain. Thanks for listening. Stay steady, uh, stay constitutional, stay informed, and stay involved.

SPEAKER_00: 31:21

Combat veteran AI Assistance Disclosure. This content was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence as a research and drafting tool. The author is a combat veteran who sustained service-related injuries, including traumatic brain injury, TBI, during deployments to Iraq. All final decisions, interpretations, and representations are the sole responsibility of the author. The use of AI does not replace professional judgment, lived experience, or subject matter expertise.