Slogging Through the Pages

James Madison

A while back (late 2012) I mentioned getting a bunch of stuff from Amazon.com including "The Federalist Papers." For those who don't know, these were papers written by three of the founders of America (John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison) which tried to convince Americans to support the ratification of the United States Constitution by enumerating the reasons why it would be better for the states to all stay together instead of splintering off into either all separate entities or into a handful of confederacies. I've been wanting to read this for a very long time and I finally started reading it maybe a month ago. It isn't particularly long. There are 85 papers spanning 256 pages, and none of the papers are particularly long (the longest was maybe six pages thus far). Unfortunately, me be the slow reading, easily distracted person that I am, I haven't gotten very far. I've been reading for a few weeks but I'm only on number fourteen, page 36.

Don't get me wrong, it is a good read. The language soars a bit at times, but it's manageable (unlike "Common Sense" which was a bit out of my league linguistically speaking). It also mentions things that we don't often think about in terms of how the country we know has prospered over the last 237 years. It also makes you wonder about what may have happened if some people had gotten their wish and the Constitution had not been ratified, causing the States to separate into multiple entities.

Another reason I'm going rather slowly is a bit more practical. As I'm reading, I'm also highlighting the particularly important passages pretty much the same way I did back in my school days. I'm not just reading this to read it, I'm also trying to understand what is being said as I go along.

I'm setting the goal of finishing this book in the next two weeks, starting when I click "Publish" on this blog post.

Note to self: spend less time on social media and more time doing stuff that actually matters.