Blog 3, 6/6: The Politics of the American Founding

In Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison states, "Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency."
To Madison, liberty is tantamount to air. Fire is fuel by air; one cannot exist without the other. Liberty creates factions: Factions are a consequence of Liberty. He uses the analogy between air/fire and liberty/factions to emphasize the key to controlling factions is not the causes of those said factions but the effects of those factions.  He says it's impossible but foolish to not only enumerate the causes but also control the causes of factions, just as it is foolish to abolish air because it causes fires. To abolish liberty is to destroy the freedoms granted to the people of The United States of America as per the Bill of Rights and therefore not only impossible to eliminate but not conducive to "political life" of a republic.
I chose this statement because I liked the poetic fluidity. A simple statement explained well that factions are innate in humans and will exist as long as liberty exists, dissolution of factions is gained by controlling the effect.