Reply #5: Wrong on the Federalists as well

[IrateCitizen]

The Federalists certainly believed in the "rule of the aristocracy", but this was also a prime feature of the Enlightenment thought of this time, especially WRT the roots of many of our founders in the Freemasonry movement. It was believed that "men of virtue" would rise up naturally in society, and that these people were those best suited to rule. Actually, such a line of thought is not that much different from the Jeffersonian anti-federalists (later the Democratic-Republicans, which then split into the Democrats and the Whigs, and the Whigs evolved into the Republicans). The prime difference between the two schools of thought in this time was that the Federalists believed in a strong federal government and centralized economic control, whereas the Anti-federalists believed in diffusing power to the states and pure, unregulated lasseiz-faire capitalism.