Sheldon Richman on the fight between anti-federalists and federalists over forming a new government in America

The Anti-Federalists could not discuss power without expressing their distaste for aristocracy...  The Revolution... was as much an internal struggle against a conservative elite as an external struggle against the British.  Aristocracy in the new nation was no imaginary nemisis.  The Federalists complained that with the breakdown in social distinctions achieved through the Revolution (apparel no longer indicated who was well-born and who was not), the wrong sort of people were populating the state legislatures, people who actually worked for a living.  The remedy was a national government, which for various reasons would favor prominent wealthier men...

In retrospect, the Anti-Federalists seemed destined to lose because they conceded too much.  (They were also handicapped, as [Pauline] Maier and [Gordon S.] Wood documented, by newspaper bias toward the Federalists, who were concentrated in the cities and towns).  Anti-Federalists objected to power, but only up to a point.  They were willing to accept a stronger national government, and they accepted taxation, regulation, and other government activism at the state and local level.  This reduced the force of their case against the Federalists.  They were arguing not about power per se, but about which level of government should have the upper hand.  That made the difference a matter of degree not kind, which gave the advantage to the nationalists.  "In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles," Ayn Rand wrote in "The Anatomy of Compromise," "it is the more consistent one who wins."  Unfortunately, the Federaliss were the more consistent.

~ Sheldon Richman, America's Counter-Revolution, pp. 10-11