Ages of organization: The emergence of national interest groups in American history

Ages of organization: The emergence of national interest groups in American history

“Liberty is to faction what air is to fire” wrote James Madison in Federalist No. 10 of his fear that constitutional freedoms to assemble and petition for redress would lead to a dangerous proliferation of political parties and interest groups. Factions being “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community,” he warned their emergence would make it nearly impossible for the government to serve the national interest.

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