His arguments for a proper division of powers have become so familiar to Americans that they may appear wearisome truisms. But it is Adams who made them truisms: his learning and his candor, almost unaided, obstructed in the United States a flooding intellectual sympathy with French theories of idyllic benevolence, omnicompetent single assemblies, and unitary states. He sacrificed his popularity in order to oppose these revolutionary opinions, but in the long run he and his friends prevailed; and modern American government, however disfigured in his eyes by haphazard introduction of the instruments of "direct democracy," nevertheless probably would seem to him sufficient vindication of his political struggle. He was the truest Federalist of them all; for where Hamilton accepted the federal system merely as a tolerable substitute for central government, and where Pickering and Dwight and the other Hartford Convention men adhered to the federal idea only when it suited New England's interest, Adams believed in the federal principle as the best possible government for America. More than any other nation in the world, the United States cling affectionately to the idea of political balance; and in large measure, this is the harvest of Adams' practical conservatism.I subscribe to this point of view. I believe that by and large, our system is as Adams envisioned and is, as Franklin hoped, possibly the best that can be hoped. I believe that whatever distortions exist in it are a result, not of any failings of the federalists, but rather in the fault of those who subsequently tinkered with the balances crafted by men like Adams and Madison; that when we introduced direct democratic elections to the Senate we altered the balance of power between away from the states in ways that have had negative reprecussions. But for the most part, a strong federal government is a necessity, lest the union be divided by secession or overtaken by a conquering rival nation. It just needs to be checked, and the liberties we enjoy every day suggest that it is being checked, although I freely admit that the regulations and the taxes suggest we should reign it in more.
The "liberties we enjoy" are decreasing day by day. The Federalists got their way, and we are screwed. Sure, the Anti-Federalists bitched until they got the Bill of Rights included in the Constitution, but the "strong central government" types have been chipping and chopping away at them since that time, and succeeding on almost all fronts. Soon they will exist only on paper, and so warped by "legal precedent" as to be meaningless.