The New Model Federalist

In the pre-dawn of the Enlightenment, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote: "If one wishes a Republic to live long, it is necessary to draw it back often towards its beginning." His words reverberate today: In the United States since 2016, as illiberalism has encroached onto the political scene, the question of preserving the Republic has become more urgent than it ever has been since the Civil War. In The New Model Federalist, a series of essays emulating the format and style of the Federalist Papers, John Caves delves into the United States of America's founding principles and suggests how we as a nation could apply them to our Republic's challenges today. Consulting the works of the Founders and those whose political thought influenced the hundred years before and after them—John Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frederick Douglass, and Theodore Roosevelt, to name but a few—Caves seeks to draw our national conversation back towards its beginning, so as to keep the American ship of state above water and progressing along the inspiring course first charted for it. Thirteen essays touch upon subjects ranging from free speech and electoral reform to economic inequality, immigration, foreign policy, climate change, representation for U.S. territories, and the national debt. Caves concludes with a call for a new political party or reform movement built around classical liberalism, federalism, sensible free-market economics, and the preservation of the United States as a powerful force for liberty in the world.