Thursday was Constitution Day, when Americans are meant to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. It is also an opportunity to revisit an enduring lesson James Madison set out in Federalist No. 51, not merely because it is a central tenet of the constitutional republic he helped create, but because it is a lesson America appears to have largely forgotten.
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
— Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸✈️🏍️⭐️🎖️ (@RepDonBacon) September 17, 2026
— James Madison, Federalist No. 51
On Constitution Day, I’m reminded of the brilliance of our separation of powers & system of checks and balances. I’ll always treasure our Constitution and Bill of Rights. pic.twitter.com/YAfqZ4ILzS
That phrase captures why the United States has remained freer than most nations: its institutions are built to compete. The branches of government check one another, while federalism divides authority among Washington, the states, and local governments. Power is scattered, contested, and constrained, leaving tyranny no easy path. The same principle underlies our supposedly preferred economic system: free markets. Competition between businesses gives consumers alternatives, restrains bad actors, and prevents any one firm from accumulating too much power.
But both parties are forgetting this lesson. Democrats, increasingly influenced by democratic socialists, have long favored concentrating political and economic power in government. Republicans, meanwhile, are growing more comfortable wielding federal authority and stripping away its limits. From blaming broad price increases on “price gouging” to treating tariffs as a cure-all and taking stakes in private companies, the impulse is the same in principle, if different in its mode.
Solutions to America’s political and economic problems increasingly rest on the same assumption: that Washington’s ambition can be trusted to solve the problems created by other ambitions. Instead of setting competing interests against one another, as Madison advised, both parties turn to the federal government, an institution with a monopoly on the lawful use of force, to manage markets and direct private behavior.
On housing affordability, the left reaches for rent freezes while the right calls for federal investigations into “price gouging.” On manufacturing, the left burdens domestic producers with regulations that undermine their ability to compete, while the right relies on tariffs and restrictions to shield them from foreign rivals. On welfare, the left typically argues for broader federally administered benefits and a more expansive safety net. But the right is increasingly accepting the same premise, merely directing it toward a different preferred outcome. Just this month, the Trump administration reportedly began drafting a plan to expand eligibility for federal child-care subsidies to certain married households with a stay-at-home parent. And on AI and data centers, both sides increasingly favor new federal authorities empowered to control the pace and terms of development.
In each case, the proposed solution is not to create countervailing ambitions, among states, firms, consumers, and institutions, but to give one already-powerful institution still more authority and assume it will use that authority wisely. Rather than handing more decisions to a single institution, policymakers should take Madison’s lesson seriously: use competing ambitions to check one another.
Within Madison’s simple lesson lies a framework for addressing many of the country’s problems, not because it promises easy answers, but because it protects liberty and forces policymakers to view problems more realistically and precisely before reaching for a solution. The first question should not be, “What new power should Washington have?” It should be, “Whose ambition can be unleashed to solve this better?”
On housing, unshackle builders and let them construct the homes Americans need. On welfare, return more responsibility to the states, curb Washington’s seemingly bottomless funding streams, and force policymakers closer to the people they serve to make every dollar count. Better still, reduce dependence on the system over time and leave more room for families, communities, charities, and private philanthropy.
On domestic production and AI, the answer is similarly straightforward: let businesses work. Stop shackling innovation, let firms compete, build, improve, fail, and try again.
As conservatives, we are constantly asked what we seek to conserve. The answer is not merely an old culture or a particular heritage, but the wisdom handed down by people who understood human nature well enough to build long-standing institutions around it, and our ability to apply that wisdom to modern problems.
Few ideas matter more today than Madison’s understanding of ambition. It bears directly on economic policy because culture is downstream of economics: the incentives created by policy shape how people work, form families, assume responsibility, and plan for the future. Poor economic policy does more than distort markets. Over time, it creates insidious incentives that weaken the culture built on work, self-reliance, family, and self-government.
Let ambition do more of the work. Disperse centralized authority, stop treating Washington as the default answer, and give individuals, families, communities, and businesses room to solve problems themselves.
