Didn't Hamilton write, "Dueling: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"
Posted on 05/11/2015 10:53:48 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
With their gift for ruining everything they touch, American progressives have done incalculable damage to the reputation of Alexander Hamilton. Yet and still, the first Secretary of the Treasury remains perhaps the most problematic of the Founding Fathers.
Teddy Roosevelt and New Republic founder Herbert Croly wholeheartedly embraced what they saw as Hamilton’s vision for a strong national government. Nevertheless, Hamilton vigorously defended the U. S. Constitution in The Federalist Papers, Heritage Foundation scholar Carson Holloway pointed out in a talk that he gave Tuesday at the Foundation’s headquarters here.
“He was not arguing for a national government any stronger than the majority of the Founding generation would accept,” Holloway argues. Holloway is also an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Nonetheless, Hamilton was a proponent of both a national bank and federal subsidies for manufacturers. Holloway argues that Hamilton’s embrace of both was more pragmatic than progressive.
“Moreover, Hamilton indicated that government support for manufacturing should be temporary” Holloway wrote in a paper that Heritage published on April 20. “’The continuance of bounties on manufactures long established,’ he admonished, ‘must always be of questionable policy,’ since it implies that there are ‘natural and inherent impediments’ to the ‘success’ of the industry. “
“Hamilton evidently did not favor the use of government support to prop up forms of manufacturing that in the long run could not be sustained by the market.”
Burr man, myself.
Didn't Hamilton write, "Dueling: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"
I wonder why he never wrote a sequel?
Good one. If Hamilton were alive today he would find it funny..and he would also be 260 years old..
I'd hardly call that subsidies for industry or advocacy of big government.
“Hamilton evidently did not favor the use of government support to prop up forms of manufacturing that in the long run could not be sustained by the market.”
Hamilton's legacy has been hijacked by the Left in America. Essentially, Hamilton wished to use the power of the state to help achieve basically conservative ends: using tariffs to protect nascent industries from being undersold by established foreign competitors, investing in infrastructure, urban planning projects, establishing a national bank to help fund emerging industries, etc. One may disagree or agree with any one of these policies, but none of them had anything to do with the establishment of a welfare state in any form. Nor was it the goal of the Federalists to use Federal coffers to prop up failing banks and industries in the long-term, as the article mentions.
Both liberals who claim Hamilton as a precursor to the New Deal and the Great Society, and conservatives who attack him for the same are either misinformed or dishonest.
That is correct, and he did so because he recognized that the US could never become a manufacturing power if its fledgling industries were undersold by established British industries with the weight of the British.
The main conflict between Federalists (later Republicans) and anti-Federalists from the late 18th until the early 20th century was tariffs/trade protection vs. free trade. Trying to retroject today's political issues (and especially parties) into that debate is mostly pointless.
It was the first instance of the fed gov crushing the citizens for purposes of revenue, unfortunately, it wasn't the last.
Alexander Hamilton ping. It’s a short article.
To be fair, at the end of the Revolutionary war, the US was dead broke and owed money all over the place.
The government almost had to generate revenue from out of thin air.
Some colonies had given more than others in the fight and some OWED more than others.. it was confusing and frustrating.
The Founding Fathers had to walk a tight rope to get solvent, and to remain a viable national entity strong enough to prove itself, to defend itself, to grow, to define itself, to trade with others, to conduct diplomacy... it all had to be done as with as much fairness as possible to all the former colonies and finance was NOT the only worry.
The wolves were at the door and America had to prove its right to exist as a stand alone country... it was a very real financial, military, material, political test ... entirely unprecedented and never to be repeated on earth.
THEY got it right ... and now “O” is dismantling it brick by brick.
United States (well, it would have been the Confederate States of America) would have been much better off had Aaron Burr got the job done BEFORE the Constitution, not after.
-PJ
Thanx for the ping.
Imho, a central Nat. Bank should be a clearing house (LoC, FX, short term loans, tariff collection, etc.), nothing more.
5.56mm
Wonder how he would have liked it now.
Thanks for the BEEP!
So close to conquering Louisiana...
Not only was it a sort of self-defense, but those pistols belonged to Hamilton and had "hair triggers." * The MSM of the time wanted everybody to believe that Hamilton "deloped," i.e., missed on purpose. Hamilton hated Burr and really wanted to kill him, but he Foxtrotted Uniform.
But Hamilton's pals got even for him, as the federal "conspiracy" case against Burr was total hosshiite.
*The pistols turned up in the collection of Chase Manhattan Bank.
Ping
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