The Federalist: Publius and The Federalist
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan introduce the course "The Federalist."
In a republic, every citizen has a duty to understand their government. The Federalist is the greatest exposition of representative government and the institutional structure of the Constitution. It explains how the Constitution established a government strong enough to secure the rights of citizens and safe enough to wield that power. This course will examine how Publius understood human nature and good government, and why he argued that the only true safeguard of liberty lies in the vigilance of the American people.
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote The Federalist to urge ratification of the Constitution and teach the principles of good government.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan. |
| 0:12.9 | And I'm Juan Dabalos. We are going to a new course today, The Federalist. Lecture 1 is Publius and the Federalist. |
| 0:23.1 | And I think a lot of you, most of you probably know what the Federalist. Lecture 1 is Publius and the Federalist. And I think a lot of you, most of you probably know what the Federalist is. But for those of you who don't, our founders were extremely |
| 0:30.5 | learned and man and they actually established a country in argument in discussion with each other in trying to convince |
| 0:40.7 | and persuade each other on what the best form of government would be. That's right. That's what |
| 0:45.4 | Hamilton tells us in Federalist 1, the first paper of the series, and we have it posted on the website |
| 0:50.0 | so you can review it. He says, we have the chance in America. This is after the revolution. We're existing under the Articles of Confederation, which aren't working that well. He says, we have the chance in America. This is after the revolution. |
| 0:54.5 | We're existing under the Articles of Confederation, which aren't working that well. He says, |
| 0:58.0 | we have the opportunity to use our minds, not force, not the normal ways that political regimes |
| 1:03.0 | are founded or decided, but we can think about what's actually best, given who we are, given |
| 1:07.9 | the principles we believe in, and form a government based on those things, |
| 1:12.1 | on reason and choice. |
| 1:14.5 | And so to persuade their fellow citizens at the time that they needed a new form of government |
| 1:18.9 | and a better form of government, and to learn what the good principles of government were, |
| 1:24.5 | three of them, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay got together and started |
| 1:30.5 | writing newspaper articles. Now, they had a plan already on the whole argument that they were |
| 1:35.3 | going to make, but it was 85 newspaper articles that were published over the series of more than a |
| 1:40.8 | year in which they made the argument for why the Constitution that they |
| 1:45.7 | were proposing should be ratified, and what are the principles of good government that this |
| 1:50.6 | constitution was establishing? And it's a monumental book in the study of political philosophy. It's |
| 1:55.8 | in the context of the ratification of the Constitution, but throughout the book, we get political |
| 2:00.1 | lessons that apply |
... |
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