Loyalist № 20. Who are "the people" when the law refuses to name them? There is a structural silence at the heart of the American founding – a deliberate decision to leave suffrage to the States. From the shadow of the three-fifths compromise to the unenviable inheritance of modern populism, the question remains: what happens when a popular democracy is built on a definition that was never meant...
Loyalist № 18. Might the Empire have prevented the American Revolution by expanding Westminster into an Imperial Parliament? One of many proposals that were put forward by American and British Statesmen alike, demographics would have doomed it to failure. Canada's Confederation offered a new way forward in loyalty to the Crown.
Loyalist № 16. Democracy needs more than elections. Madison defended an appointed Senate not as a barrier to the popular will, but as its ballast. Our first Canadian Prime Minister agreed: some institutions must stand apart from partisan winds. In Canada, as in the early republic, not all wisdom comes by vote.
Loyalist № 9. Madison warned that even a chamber of sages could descend into a mob. Today’s Congress faces the opposite danger: silence, submission, and the slow death of deliberation. When its power was challenged, it did not resist – it abdicated.
Loyalist № 8. The Electoral College was meant to shield the presidency from partisanship and populism – but quickly became their tool. Federalist No. 68 offers a window into the original design and its failure, raising deeper questions: What can Westminster democracy teach us about balancing local and national interests? And have Canadians unknowingly created an Electoral College of Our own?
Loyalist № 7. The rise of factional politics in Canada and the U.S. reveals a deeper failure of design. Whether through regional fragmentation or ideological polarization, Our institutions no longer reward broad-based coalitions. Madison warned against these very dangers – and what they would mean for democracy in North America.