Beginning a new theme in Federalist No. 23 on the “necessity of a constitution, at least equally energetic with the one proposed,” Alexander Hamilton makes the kind of bold argument ever after associated with the adjective “Hamiltonian.” To those Anti-Federalists who tremble at the thought of a strong national government, he offers not reassurance but a rebuke. Wake up! The world is dangerous, and we need a government that can meet those dangers when they menace us:

“The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite; and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.”

What properly renders a government limited and therefore trustworthy, friendly rather than inimical to freedom, is not a nervous diminution of the powers it might need to govern and defend a great country. For “it is both unwise and dangerous to deny the federal government an unconfined authority in respect to al those objects which are intrusted to its management.” No, it is the government’s “internal structure,” the arrangement of its institutions, that will ensure it is not “unworthy of the confidence of the people.”

In our present war, the president and the Congress, the two institutions with actual responsibility for the nation’s preservation, appear to have understood this principle with respect to the Guantanamo detainees—hence the Military Commissions Act. Two days ago a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court got it too, in Boumediane v. Bush (PDF file here), rightly holding that “no constitutional shackles,” in Hamilton’s words, have been imposed on the government in the prosecution of a war when it comes to foreign enemies held in military custody outside the nation’s territory. We’ll see if the Supreme Court has at least five members willing to prefer the prudence of Publius over the folly of the New York Times.

(For explanation of this recurring feature, see here.)