The Democracy Papers: Paper Ten
James Madison warned us that factions, driven by their own interests at the expense of the common good, would be the biggest threat to democracy. And... he wasn’t wrong.
The Tyranny of Factions
James Madison warned us that factions, driven by their own interests at the expense of the common good, would be the biggest threat to democracy. And... he wasn’t wrong. In Federalist No. 10, he argued that the only way to stop factions from tearing a republic apart was to make sure no single group could seize total control. A large republic with a federal system would dilute extremist influence and protect against tyranny, whether from the majority or the minority.
Or that was the theory, anyway.
In reality, we’ve seen what happens when factions get their hands on power: chaos, instability, and real-world harm to the people just trying to live their lives. Factions aren’t only influencing our government; they’re actively hijacking it. From election denial to extremist policies on education, healthcare, and basic human rights, the federal government swings wildly between ideological extremes, forcing everyday Americans to suffer the consequences. This isn’t governance. It’s a wildly dangerous carnival ride that is eventually going to kill someone.
Factions Gone Wild: The Collapse of Stability
Madison understood that factions were inevitable. What he feared was their unchecked influence, the ability of one group to force its will on everyone else. Look around because that’s exactly what’s happening.
Election denial is no longer a fringe belief—it’s mainstream in one of the country’s two major parties. The Republican Party has fully embraced the cult of MAGA, with a significant chunk of its base refusing to accept any election result that doesn’t favor them. If one faction refuses to recognize democracy itself, democracy ceases to function.
The Supreme Court has become an ideological weapon. The Federalist Society (oh, the irony) has stacked the Court with justices who legislate from the bench, overturning decades of precedent to impose their own ideology on the country. From abortion rights to voting rights, a handful of unelected extremists are dictating policy for millions.
Healthcare and education policy shift every time there’s a new president. One administration expands healthcare access; the next guts it. One enforces science-based education; the next inserts religious extremism into public schools. This constant ideological whiplash is exhausting and potentially even deadly. People lose insurance, their care is denied for fear of prosecution, children’s education becomes a battleground, and entire communities are left in limbo, never knowing what rights they’ll have from one administration to the next.
This is what happens when factions take over. Instead of governing the people, they subjugate them. Instead of providing stability, they sow chaos.
The Federal Government Shouldn't Be a Battlefield
The federal government wasn't meant to be a tool for cramming one ideology into the entire country's brain. Madison believed that spreading power across a large republic (states, institutions, and branches of government) would prevent any one faction from taking over.
But that only works if we respect the system.
Instead, both parties now treat the federal government like a prize to be won, a vehicle for pushing their agenda nationwide. Every time power shifts, policies are dismantled, reversed, or rewritten entirely.
- One administration expands reproductive rights, the next tries to criminalize abortion.
- One administration enforces climate protections, the next sells off national parks to oil companies.
- One administration prioritizes public education, the next guts school funding and installs extremists on school boards.
This is ideological warfare, and it’s tearing us apart from the inside. Meanwhile, the people at the top, the billionaire frat boys funding these policies, aren’t the ones suffering. They’ll always have healthcare. Their kids will always have access to the best education. It’s us little guys who will always pay the price.
A Broken System, A Broken People
The consequences of this never-ending factional war aren’t just political. They’re deeply, deeply personal.
Parents can’t plan for their children’s education because the curriculum changes based on which party controls the state. People die because they lose healthcare every time a new administration decides it’s time to undo the last one’s work. Entire industries collapse because businesses don’t know what regulations they’ll be dealing with from one election to the next.
This instability is pushing people to disengage, to stop voting, to stop believing that government can work at all. And when that happens, only the most extreme factions are the only ones left standing. That’s how democracies die. Not in a single, dark moment, but in a slow and steady erosion of stability, until people give up and just let the extremists have their way.
So What the Hell Do We Do?
Madison’s answer was simple: make it impossible for any one faction to seize total control. That means building systems that resist extremist takeovers, that protect basic rights no matter who’s in power, that prevent the federal government from being used as a political weapon. How do we do that?
- Codify essential rights into law. Healthcare, education, voting rights, ERA—these shouldn’t be up for debate every four years. Basic human rights need to be locked in, untouchable by political whims.
- Break the cycle of Supreme Court extremism. Expand the Court, impose term limits, whatever it takes. But we can’t let a handful of unelected justices dictate policy for a generation.
- Decentralize power where it makes sense. Not everything needs to be a federal issue. Some policies, like education, should have national standards but allow for local flexibility. Others, like voting rights, should be protected at the federal level to prevent extremist states from undermining democracy.
- Make it harder for political factions to hijack democracy. That means getting dark money out of politics, reforming how elections work, and making it clear that no one, not even a former president, is above the law.
We don’t have to accept this cycle of chaos. We don’t have to keep living under the tyranny of extremists who are actively trying to harm our fellow Americans. But if we don’t take action, we’ll keep spinning and spinning and spinning in this loop until democracy finally collapses under the weight of its own instability. Republics only survive when people refuse to let them fail.
We Fight Back
Federal employees across agencies are quietly resisting, refusing to comply with unlawful orders, and throwing sand in the gears to slow extremist policies down. They are the silent firewall, the ones who keep institutions functioning despite the chaos swirling around them. Whistleblowers exposing corruption, bureaucrats deliberately slowing harmful policy rollouts, technologists squirreling away public data before it’s erased—this is what resistance looks like.
And it’s everywhere. Behind desks, in courtrooms, classrooms, boardrooms, and deep in the administrative trenches.
We will fight back. We will refuse to let this great experiment fail. Because democracy is either surrendered, or it’s defended. And we choose to defend it—by any and all means necessary.