Posted on 12/20/2019 6:46:26 AM PST by Kaslin
Using the framework of the U.S. Constitution, Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in inventing the America that we live in today. With that liberty providing guidance, he fashioned the nascent American economy and its multifaceted engines from Wall St. to Main St. that interacted with the world of international trade and finance beyond. George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury’s singular legacy in the realms of the banking system, taxes, tariffs and trade treaties is beyond doubt.
Today, the White House is occupied by a president who seems to be in tune with Hamilton’s vision of economic nationalism. In a never-ending series of tired leftwing clichés -- culminating in the current impeachment orgy -- Donald Trump has been compared to such modern historical monsters as Hitler and Mussolini, when in fact the more apt comparison would be to a fictional character, Ayn Rand’s John Galt, the uber-capitalist protagonist of her novel Atlas Shrugged.
In Rand’s “Objectivist” worldview the individual reigned supreme, as the “collective” stifled human liberty and economic prosperity, and it was only the absence of the state from the machinery of commerce that the individual was able to live a free and meaningful life. Ironically, Rand parted company with Hamilton’s view that a strong central government was necessary to accomplish these ends.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yep, and you can throw in Jefferson, Madison and Monroe as well.
It’s kind of funny. On paper, the Founding Fathers left us wonderful stuff. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist Papers, etc. That stuff stands the test of time and we are much the better for it.
However, as individuals, many of the Founding Fathers were sort of jerks. As far as I know, George Washington was nearly perfect. But Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and others were somewhat nasty people.
But does it matter? Our current president is sometimes criticized for his “offensive” tweets and whatnot. I think President Trump can stand proudly alongside any of the Founding Fathers. I judge them by their actions.
I see him as more Andrew Jackson like.
And to think the neo-Confederates have the unmitigated gall to claim Washington as their own!
Yes, mabey with a new GOP congress, he will be Jackson like on the deficit.
Pro and cons:
Hamiltonism - governmental consolidation, the elimination of true federalism, dominant executive power, and mercantilist economic policies - amounted to a betrayal of the principles for which Americans fought in the Revolution.
He’s energetic. “In quantum mechanics, a Hamiltonian is an operator corresponding to the sum of the kinetic energies plus the potential energies for all the particles in the system (this addition is the total energy of the system in most of the cases under analysis).“
Wow, I had to look that up. Did not know that about Jackson
Hamilton fought in the Revolution, and, as author of the Federalist Papers, he helped explain the Constitution to the public and later generations and get it ratified at the time. Hamilton also put the US on a sound financial basis as Treasury Secretary for Washington and was highly regarded and successful as a practicing attorney in New York.
Even if Hamilton was more admirable in parts than likable as a whole person, blaming him for today's partisanship is a reach too far. All democracies have political parties, with intermittent bouts of seemingly pointless bickering between them. Given the passage of time, surely Hamilton has at most a remote and slight responsibility if any for the sharpness of today's partisan politics.
Moreover, Hamilton deserves credit not criticism for opposition to the French Revolution, the issue that catalyzed the formation of the first American party system. Edmund Burke similarly broke with his contemporaries and became the founder of modern conservatism.
As with Burke, conservatives today owe a debt to Alexander Hamilton for opposing the destructive radicalism of the French Revolution. And I am surely not the only one to see our current magnificent President as in part an heir to Hamilton as a New Yorker dedicated to American liberty and greatness.
Takes at least two to be partisan.
LOL! The anti-Jackson maybe. Trump has a tremendous number of outstanding policies but fiscal responsibility isn't one of them. And Congress is infinitely worse.
For anyone here on FR who has NOT read Atlas Shrugged”, I highly recommend that you do so.
I ran out of “unread’ books in my house a month ago & I picked up “Atlas Shrugged’ & read it for about the 14th time. Took me 13 days. 1087 pages in paperback. IT NEVER disappoints.
In Rand’s “Objectivist” worldview the individual reigned supreme, as the “collective” stifled human liberty and economic prosperity, and it was only the absence of the state from the machinery of commerce that the individual was able to live a free and meaningful life.
IIRC, doesn’t the Hamiltonian derive from classical mechanics?
Also, can you say Schrodinger Equation?
I can’t disagree with that.
LOL, I have read 1087 pages twice, and 1037 pages five or six more times...:)
I cut out the “long speech” now...
I wonder if Broadway will let him sing and dance in the show : )
That didn’t take long.
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