The US Founding Fathers abhorred factions. The 10th Federalist Paper by James
Madison in 1787 is a study of how to defend the fledgeling republic against
the dangers of organised zealotry, the curse that blighted earlier republics
in world history.
Madison defined factions as groups of citizen "united and actuated by
some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of
other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".
The bone of contention was thought to be disputes over the "unequal
distribution of property", and so it has proved to be as we see today
in the bitter fight between debtors and creditors, or between those who live
off government and those who pay for it.
Madison believed a powerful continental Congress -- rooted in Washington
rather than state legislatures -- would work against factions. Regional
diversity would muddy the ideological waters. This is in fact what happened.
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