Thoughts on Hamilton versus Jefferson and the Constitution

[FearlessFreep]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo144.html

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Cool. I'll have to pick up that book when it's out.

 

[terryl965]

Should be a great read

 

[KenpoTex]

thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Excerpt of article:

Jefferson and most other founders viewed the Constitution as a set of constraints on the powers of government. Hamilton thought of it in exactly the opposite way – as a grant of powers rather than as a set of limitations – a potential rubber stamp on anything and everything the federal government ever wanted to do. He and his fellow nationalists (the Federalists) set about to use the lawyerly manipulation of words to "amend" the Constitution without utilizing the formal amendment process. "Having failed to persuade his colleagues at Philadelphia of the beauties of a truly national plan of government," Rossiter wrote, "and having thereafter recognized the futility of persuading the legislatures of three-fourths of the states to surrender even a jot of their privileges, he set out to remold the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy."

And how did he "remold" the Constitution? He began by inventing a number of myths (i.e., lies) about the American founding. On June 29, 1787, before the Constitution was even ratified, he said that the sovereign states were merely "artificial beings" that had nothing to do with creating the union – despite the fact that the Constitution itself (in Article 7) declared that the document would be ratified (if it was to be ratified) by the citizens of at least nine of the thirteen states. He told the New York State Assembly in that same year that the "nation," and not the states, had "full power of sovereignty," clearly contradicting the written Constitution and actual history. This lie would be repeated by nationalist politicians from Clay, Webster and Story, to Lincoln. It is still repeated to this day by various apologists for the American empire.

This is why I've said for years that Jefferson had the right idea, and that Hamilton, Clay and Lincoln destroyed what this Union of Nations once was.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Book is out, and I skimmed it. Looked pretty interesting.

 

[FearlessFreep]

Hey, thanks for bringing it back up

 

[Bob Hubbard]

More on Hamilton:

And what does "Hamilton’s Republic" look like, from a government policy perspective? It is one that is run by a dictatorial chief executive with king-like powers, for one thing. At the Constitutional convention Hamilton presented his real agenda: a "permanent" president who would appoint all the governors, and who would have veto power over all state legislation. "A king!" is what his Jeffersonian detractors accused him of asking for, and they were right. He failed at the convention, but few could deny that modern American presidents are every bit as king-like as Hamilton wanted them to be – and more. How else could one describe a president who can bomb any country in the world at will, and without the least bit of congressional approval?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo136.html

The great debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over the purpose of government, which animates American politics to this day, was very much about economic policy. Hamilton was a compulsive statist who wanted to bring the corrupt British mercantilist system – the very system the American Revolution was fought to escape from – to America. He fought fiercely for his program of corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, public debt, pervasive taxation, and a central bank run by politicians and their appointees out of the nation’s capital.

Jefferson and his followers opposed him every step of the way because they understood that Hamilton’s agenda was totally destructive of liberty. And unlike Hamilton, they took Adam Smith’s warnings against economic interventionism seriously.

Hamilton complained to George Washington that "we need a government of more energy" and expressed disgust over "an excessive concern for liberty in public men" like Jefferson. Hamilton "had perhaps the highest respect for government of any important American political thinker who ever lived," wrote Hamilton biographer Clinton Rossiter.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo151.html