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.”
You’re absolutely right. But don’t forget that President Washington was in full support. Both men believed in a stronger federal government than you and I are comfortable with.
We need to remember that not every Founding Father would qualify as a conservative. Not even a brilliant one like Hamilton, who is more than anyone else responsible for our current state of federal supremacy.
Hamilton negotiated the “dinner table compromise”, which ensured state governments would be subordinate to the Feds. He’s the reason we don’t have fifty sovereign states with a weak federal government to handle foreign entanglements; we have his vision of a strong central government with fifty administrative divisions to enforce its rules.
Hamilton (and Washington himself) is extremely problematic for conservatives today. He may not recognize the extensive reach of the FedGov today, but it’s entirely due to his life’s efforts.
Washington is sacrosanct, and I'm ok w/ that to a large degree, but his dealings w/ and attitude towards the early settlers on the frontier was far less than noble.
I think that what you mean to say is that not every Founding Father would qualify as a libertarian or a classic liberal. The Anti-Federalists were close to modern libertarianism, the Federalists were closer to the British mercantile model. What many people don't recognize (because they project today's political world into another century) is that the Federalists were regarded as arch-conservatives and reactionaries by the anti-Federalists, while the anti-Federalists (Jefferson, etc) were regarded as radicals by the Federalists. To a large extent, this characterization was true at the time: the Anti-Federalists supported the French Revolution, the Federalists opposed it and wanted to restore stronger ties (albeit under autonomy) with Britain.
You can't really retroject today's political debates into the late 18th century. Just because today's liberals find a strong central state convenient and conservatives inconvenient, this wasn't always the case (nobody considered 19th/early 20th century anarchists "conservative"). The Federalists wanted to use the centralized state to pursue essentially conservative ends, the Anti-Federalists opposed the centralized state for the purpose of what were (for the time) essentially radical ends.
I agree w/ that. Today's Rs and Ds have no correlation to the Fed/anti-Fed debates of late 18th century.
Very true.
But we have a tendency to presume that all the Founding Fathers would fit into our Party today, which is patently false.
We should be very wary of lionizing Hamilton, who did more to squash States’ Rights than anyone save Lincoln. Regardless of why he did it, we have him to thank for a centralized, supreme federal government instead of sovereign states.
A little lefty for us, but with a lot of common sense, too.
Of the founders, I think, Jefferson had the clearest idea of independent citizens and what their relationship w/ gov. should be. Remember the BoR, the purpose of which is to limit gov., was his idea.
I attended primary school during the War Years (WWII) and immediately following, and was done with High School before the mid-Fifties, so a lot of what Michael Parenti has to say comes after my time, and is foreign to me. My history source was a crusty old teacher born before 1900 (J.W. (Jim) Nicholson ~ God bless him), but my primary sources were my Mother, My Aunt (both teachers in their own right), and my Grandfather. So my view of history comes from a whole different world.
By the way . . . thanks for the ping.
They certainly wanted a stronger federal government than Jefferson would have been comfortable with.
But the kind of minute regulation of trade that came along later wouldn't have been an option back then. Social insurance programs weren't on the table. The federal government playing a role in health and local education and law enforcement also wasn't on the agenda.
Maybe we can think of Washington and Hamilton in Canadian terms. That's to say, you had a big country with a small population. You needed to make an army and to build up some industries. You needed to build forts and some kind of roads or canals. All that falls short of the role government has today, even if you put J.Q. Adams's a little more expansive view of government promoting culture on the table.
Nobody’s suggesting that they anticipated everything about modern statism. But the fact remains that it can trace its origins back to the day when men like Washington and Hamilton made the states subordinate to the Feds. Our capital city is appropriately named.
And that’s not to diminish their very real accomplishments. But we should remember that they were the first to strike a real blow against states’ rights, way back at the beginning. They set our nation on a most unfortunate course.
When dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Coolidge was President, and school was 5-mile hike uphill both ways on a path beset by hostile Indians?
At least that was the way I had it.
LOL!
Coolidge was President way before WWII, and dinosaurs were even earlier.
I was referring to the last good President. As far as the dinosaurs go, look in the Senate.
Senators are similar to dinosaurs . . . only dumber.
I think RR was a fairly good President. Before him . . . probably Coolidge, like you intimate.
"Free Trade" + income taxes = economic/social ruination.
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.
Conservatism seeks to protect the gains of the past whereas progressives see no value in the past and would sacrifice all previous achievement for any fanciful chance future advancement. Everything you describe here is essentially 'progressive'. True conservatives would let the market naturally decide which industries, in which locations, would prosper without government interference. If industries elsewhere are already established, it's hardly very conservative to use the power of government to promote the supposed progress of industry elsewhere. A true conservative doesn't believe that the public should have to pay for private infrastructure or even nominally public infrastructure which is really only meant to serve a private interest. Progress at the expense of that which could be conserved ain't conservative.
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.
How is using a system taxation and forced loans to subsidize building and industry which can't profitably support itself NOT welfare?
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.
So, you think that, when they proceed to communize the economy, they will only seize successful banks and industries? My, how conservative of you!
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.
I am honest and well-informed, and I can say with some great confidence that Hamilton was a very important early influence in the eventual formation of American economic 'progressivism'. Even your own apologetic description of his agenda sounds like the sales pitch for the New Deal or the Great Society.
What previously existing thing, exactly, were they conserving?
...the Anti-Federalists opposed the centralized state for the purpose of what were (for the time) essentially radical ends.
Well, the Antis were led by a fellow who knew that "radical" actually meant 'getting back to the root' of something. So, yeah.
Both Hamilton and Washington would be very comfortable in the democrat party of the early part of the 19th century...
Of course they are no more democrats today to compare ...they are either socialist or Marxists...
Both Hamilton and Washington would probably hang most of them...if alive today...
Hamilton and other Federalists wanted to keep much of the British political system intact, minus the monarch, including the British mercantilist system (central banking, Corn Laws and other tariffs).
Hamilton's goal in centralization wasn't the creation of a welfare state, it was in turning America into an industrial and military power. The debates at the time weren't pro or anti-welfare state, which didn't exist. It was a debate between agrarians vs. supporters of industrialization. Hamilton was an heir to William Pitt, not a precursor to Franklin Roosevelt or LBJ. A Social Security system or food stamps weren't on anyone's radar screen at the time, and to retroject the Great Society policies onto Hamilton and Washington is beyond absurd.
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