Who were the Anti-Federalists, and what did they believe?
In an Extremely SIMPLIFIED way Anti- Feds were against the constitution, thinking it would allow the president to become King and because of that we have the bill of rights.(Don't we right now have a president that thinks he's KING ?) Patrick Henry was an Anti-Federalist. They did not want such a centralized government .
What is a reason that the Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution?
Because there was not protections for the rights of States and for the rights of people and they feared it might give too much power to the upper classes and not enough representation from the people. They viewed it as giving too much power to the Federal government over the power of the States. They technically were not against it but wanted the protections of rights added known as the Bill of Rights. http://www.pinzler.com/ushistory/argantf...
Help for a political cartoon? Federalists and Anti-Federalists?
You could draw a person from Georgia trying to spend money in Virginia. One of the complaints about the Articles of Confederation is that each state coined its own money, making it difficult for people to travel from state to state and do business there. This would be the federalist argument. If you want to do an anti-federalist cartoon, you could draw Alexander Hamilton (a federalist) as King George III (king during the American Revolution), implying that the federalists want to return this country to an oppressive monarchy.
Anti-Federalist Arguments against Checks and Balances/ Separation of Powers?
Well the checks and balances was set up so that the government can't be easily changed. However, some people think the government was set up to protect only white male landowners and entrpreneurs and that the oppression of the poor was part of the plan from the beginning. There aren't great reasons against because checks and balances are good. It just slows things down and prevents major change from occuring.
Anyone understand Anti federalist Paper No. 17...Federalist power will ultimately subvert state authority?
The general point of the article,and the anti-Federalists in general, is that the creation of a central government via the Constitution eliminates all power of the states. The first lines you quote are indicating that the Congress can levy any tax of any kind it wishes. The second lines you quote are saying that the Congress may interpret the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution so generally that it may pass a law of any kind it wishes. Understand all of this in context that anti-federalists were in favor of the loose union of the states with a very weak central government created by the Articles of Confederation, but ended by the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. The anti-federalists feared that a strong central government would take them back to the tyrrany of the British they fought to overthrow. What they forgot is that the people voted for members of the House of Representatives every 2 years, and the state legislatures (at that time) voted for members of the Senate every 6 years. If the Congress passed undesirable laws, the people and the states could replace them with new people who would reverse those laws. Their predictions of a tyrranical central government did not come to pass because this government was a representative democracy, not an all-powerful monarchy that need not respond to the wished of the people.
Are people misinterpreting the Second Amendment? The whole bit about the “Well Regulated Militia” seems to be ignored.
As the first poster stated, “well regulated” didn't have the same meaning most gun control advocates use, back in the Eighteenth Century.“Well regulated”, in the sense of “tightly bound by rules”, is a *much* later meaning of the phrase. In the Founding period, “well regulated” meant only what it still means to a clockmaker or gunsmith - “functioning properly”. The phrase that corresponds to the modern “tightly bound by rules” definition would be “ well regimented “ ; in fact, that is the source of the military unit title of “regiment” - it means a unit here the soldiers are under a strict regimen of control.But there is more. If you parse the Second Amendment grammatically, the opening phrase is revealed as a subordinate clause, which means it doesn't limit the right recognized in the main clause. It is an explanatory clause that gives a reason for *why* this right is being explicitly recognized. Such explanatory clauses are rather common in laws, particularly in the Eighteenth Century. Heck, the base Constitution has just such an explanatory clause as it's opening.The Founding Fathers were quite clear in their public writings as to what they meant by the Second Amendment - much of these discussions are contained in the Federalist Papers, which were the public discussions of why the Constitution was a good thing and why it should be adopted, before it was adopted. The arguments of the Antifederalists that the Constitution concentrated too much power in federal hands, and that a woupd be tyrant could use those powers to oppress the people, were addressed - the Federalists initially thought that no explicit recognition of the *private* right of individuals to keep and bear personal arms sufficient to rebel was necessary, because they thought no rational person would deny the fundamental right existed… just as they felt about the rest of the rights eventually enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights represents the Federalists saying, in effect, “You guys are paranoid, and we don't *need* to explicitly protect these rights, because they are so bloody obvious, but if it makes you feel better, we will send out a bunch of amendments to be ratified as soon as this Constitution goes into effect to salve your fears - happy now? Going to ratify the Constitution?”
Compare and contrast the 2 political parties of the 1790's?
Fed- loose construction, strong navy + army, national bank Rep- strict construction, strong state gov., no large standing armies They differ because their views were complete opposites of each other unlike modern parties