James Madison was a very intelligent man and was one of the fathers of our country. In Madison's Federalist Paper number 10 he describes the need to control factions in the United States and how the government should do so. The Federalist documents are a key point in describing how to control the “factions” that are so dangerous to the young government, or so Madison believes. In Madison's article he clearly lays out his thoughts on the origins of factions, his feelings on democracy versus republic, and how to control factions. For Madison, factions, or groups of citizens with bad intentions towards the new government, represent a threat to the new government and it is impossible to find an acceptable remedy. Madison considers both freedom and the idea of ​​holding opposing opinions as key sources of factions. This also proves to be why factions can never be completely eradicated. For Madison there are “two methods of removing the causes of factions: first, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, giving every citizen the same opinions, the same passions and the same interests.” (p. A21) Of course both of these ideas are completely absurd because they are impossible to have. Removing freedom, in the words of James Madison, would be “worse than disease” (p. A21) for the pure fact that abolishing freedom would mean abolishing everything that was fought for during the American Revolution. Madison compares freedom to air in that removing it would eliminate fire and factions, but it would also kill all life, so it's basically a lose-lose situation. Madison's latest idea is to basically make everyone think homogeneously, which is obviously impractical. As Madison says "As long as man's reason continues to fail, and he is free to exercise it, different opinions will be formed" (page A22) Men will always have divergent opinions because we are always influenced by reason and self-love. Madison goes on to say that the causes of factions are “so seeded in the nature of man” (p. A22) and all we can do is try to control the factions but it is impossible to get rid of them completely. The Federalist document continues with Madison's feelings about having a democracy rather than a republic which he thinks is a better decision.