"This combination is the embodiment of Hamilton's warning in 'Federalist No. 71' that the people are continually beset by 'the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it.' A demagogue with contempt for the Constitution, colluding with many of the wealthiest Americans on the promise that their wealth will be translated into political power and favors is just the sort of alliance that the Founders warned would corrupt popular government: that 'the people,' in Madison’s phrase, 'would be misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men.'"
At The Atlantic, George Thomas writes that today "the country is witnessing these three fears come together: a demagogue who unites the self-interested rich with the politically ignorant."
And Alexis Coe at Slate revists pertinent sentences cut from the final draft of George Washington's Farewell Address.
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