Failing to learn from history

“But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm… But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 46
I wonder what our fourth president, a strict constitutional constructionist, would think of us now.