Federalist No. 20 Explained: When the Sword Is All You Have

The Federalist Papers: Explained · Jul 30, 2026 · 30m

For five papers now, the founders have toured the wreckage of history's confederacies — and now they reach the one that hurts: the Dutch republic, the rich, free, Protestant union that Americans most admired and tried to imitate. On paper it looked like a real government; in practice it was so paralyzed that one wealthy province quietly paid everyone's bills and then collected the unpaid shares from its neighbors at the point of a bayonet, a hereditary prince was the only thing holding the whole thing together, and — at the very moment these words were being written — a foreign army was…