Free Republic

  "A Republic, If You Can Keep It" by John F. McManus November 6, 2000   Knowing that a democracy is a government of men in which the tyranny of the majority rules, America's Founding Fathers wisely created a republic - a government ruled by law.On Constitution Day, September 17, 2000, President Bill Clinton spoke at the ground-breaking ceremony for a National Constitution Center at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. On that occasion the president remarked that the men who signed the Constitution "understood the enormity of what they were attempting to do: to create a representative democracy." He heaped praise...

Alexander Hamilton was one of the most influential of the United States' founding fathers. As the first secretary of the treasury he placed the new nation on a firm financial footing, and although his advocacy of strong national government brought him into bitter conflict with Thomas Jefferson and others, his political philosophy was ultimately to prevail in governmental development. Hamilton's own career was terminated prematurely when he was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. ~ Early Life ~ Hamilton was born on the West Indian island of Nevis, probably in 1755. Since he was the illegitimate son...

Under the “collective right” view, the Second Amendment is a federalism provision that provides to States a prerogative to establish and maintain armed and organized militia units akin to the National Guard, and only States may assert this prerogative. (1) There is Always a Kernel of Truth in Any Good Propaganda Today’s “progressive” interpretation of the Second Amendment contends that the militia was intended by the Founders to mean organized state armies. For clarification, let us examine the writings of Alexander Hamilton, one of the leaders of the Federalist movement during the debates that created our Constitution. In his writings,...

The nation of commoners Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin were skeptical about the common man and government. By PERRY TREADWELL Tuesday, December 14, 2004 This has been the year of Alexander Hamilton, with a new biography and a museum exhibit in New York City. All that I remember about Hamilton from high school senior history taken more than a half-century ago is a quote attributed to him, "The People is a Beast." More recently, a poem Hamilton may have read by a 17th century Italian cleric, Tommaso Campanella, has appeared. The first stanza goes: The People is a beast of...

Two centuries after their famous forebears met on the banks of the Hudson, the Hamiltons and the Burrs are still at it."LOOK AT THIS," said Antonio Burr. "Look at what they're selling." Standing in the gift shop of the New-York Historical Society on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Burr held a magnet to the light. On it were portraits of his ancestor Aaron Burr, the third vice president of the United States, and Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, whom Vice President Burr killed in a duel 200 years ago. Each man's portrait stared coldly at the other's.It was...

James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. If they were alive today, they may well be sentenced under the Campaign Reform Act of 2002. While the government is at it, they might also charge them with RICO violations - so immense was their conspiracy. You see, Madison, Jay & Hamilton were the . . .

This is a movie review, a reminder of one of the most reprehensible people in American history, and a well-deserved pranging of James Carville and Lanny Davis. Both of them appeared last week on every TV program in the known universe to decry the criticisms of John Kerry by 254 Swift Boat veterans because “they were not on the same boat.” This is a bald-faced, brass-plated lie in a number of ways. But before we count those up, a review of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie, The Village, is in order Yes, this will connect up. And so will a...

Theory of a founding father's African ancestry Friday, July 23, 2004                                              By LAWRENCE AARONAS MUCH as I thought I knew about Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary, nobody ever told me he was black. Yes. You heard it here first, folks.And you'll think about it from now on every time you take out a $10 bill.Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow is the latest one to explore the theory.I was totally blown away by that information when a friend casually mentioned Hamilton's link to two significant anniversaries - the 250th anniversary of Columbia University, originally Kings College where he was schooled, and...

After two centuries, it's still a sore point. Descendants of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr will reenact the nation's most famous duel when they meet today in Weehawken, N.J., on the 200th anniversary of that sordid event. Alexander Hamilton, a brilliant secretary of the treasury under George Washington but his career on the skids, took one bullet in the midsection from a dueling pistol fired by his bitter foe, Aaron Burr. The mortally wounded Hamilton fell to the ground and died the next day at age 50. Burr, 48, was unscathed. Burr, an equally brilliant politician and vice president under...

WEEHAWKEN, N.J. (AP) -- The bitter grudge between their ancestors has long faded, but on Sunday descendants of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr marked their paces with pistols in hand. Antonio Burr, a descendant of Burr's cousin, arrived by rowboat in period costume and fired a replica of the .54-caliber pistol that mortally wounded Hamilton 200 years ago in the July 11, 1804 duel. Douglas Hamilton, a fifth-great-grandson of Hamilton, feigned the historic hip wound, dropping to one knee and then falling to the ground in a sitting position. The event was the families' first meeting in two centuries. "It...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Two hundred years ago today, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton squared off in a sunrise duel on a wooded ledge in Weehawken, N.J., above the Hudson River. Burr was vice president when he leveled his fatal shot at Hamilton, the former Treasury secretary, who died the next day in what is now the West Village of Manhattan. New Yorkers turned out en masse for Hamilton's funeral, while Burr (rightly or wrongly) was branded an assassin and fled south in anticipation of indictments in New York and New Jersey. To the horror of Hamilton's admirers, the vice president, now...

"Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country."- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 25

WEEHAWKEN, N.J. -- Douglas Hamilton plans to pay tribute to the family name, even if it means losing _ again. Next month, Hamilton, a fifth great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton, will stand in for his founding father ancestor when the Weehawken Historical Commission re-enacts the July 11, 1804, duel with Aaron Burr that left Hamilton mortally wounded. Antonio Burr, a descendant of Aaron Burr's cousin, will stand in for his equally famous ancestor. There are no direct descendants of Aaron Burr. "Some people in the family questioned re-enacting somebody getting shot, but I have received assurance the re-enactment will be done...

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This week we formally dedicated the World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The center of the Memorial is a reflecting pool in front of a curved wall on which there are 4,050 golden stars, each of them representing one hundred Americans who gave the last full measure of devotion in that conflict. This was the long-delayed memorial for the 16 million Americans who served in that conflict, only a quarter of whom are still alive. A substantial number of those were in attendance at the dedication. Of course, World War II was not the war in...

He is remembered today less for the way he lived than for the way he died, but the life of Alexander Hamilton was "so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up." Such is the assessment of Ron Chernow in this splendid new biography of Hamilton. Relying on exhaustive research in several countries, in "Alexander Hamilton" Chernow has crafted an incredibly thorough account of the life of a man who had a "unique flair for materializing at every major turning point in the early history of the republic." "Hamilton was the supreme double threat among the founding...

In our imagination, the founding fathers are so embedded in their native states - Washington, Jefferson and Madison on their Virginia plantations, John Adams on his New England farm - that Alexander Hamilton can seem the footloose exception. The first treasury secretary prided himself on his broad, continental perspective, and even fervid admirers have been loath to cast him as a New Yorker, lest this tarnish his gleaming national vision. Yet in five years of research, I have found that Hamilton, loaded with brash charm, bottomless energy and worldly cunning, was in fact the classic New Yorker and a quintessential...

Here we have one of the world’s smaller nations. A weak nation, though rich in natural resources. It has just endured a national war fought on its soil, combined with a civil war. Its population is riven with political and religious differences that have set neighbor against neighbor. Some people have fled in terror from attacks by their fellow citizens. Many have had their homes and businesses destroyed. Some have been killed. What are the prospects that democracy, like Kool-Aid, can be established quickly in such a nation? Just add water and stir? In a nation that has no experience...

FEDERALIST PAPERS Federalist No. 78 The Judiciary Department From McLEAN'S Edition, New York. Author: Alexander Hamilton To the People of the State of New York: WE PROCEED now to an examination of the judiciary department of the proposed government. In unfolding the defects of the existing Confederation, the utility and necessity of a federal judicature have been clearly pointed out. It is the less necessary to recapitulate the considerations there urged, as the propriety of the institution in the abstract is not disputed; the only questions which have been raised being relative to the manner of constituting it, and to...

"If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority...the majority...must conform to the views of the minority.... Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of he public good." --