I’m not a neo-confederate. The Republican Party was founded by old Whigs after that party broke up. The Whigs believed in spending money on massive infrastructure programs. These programs in the 19th century, just like today, were wasteful boondoggles. The old Whigs also supported a national bank, which you’ll recall President Jackson had disbanded via a veto.
Homosexual marriage wasn’t an issue when Herbert Hoover was alive and as such it’s an irrelevant point to bring up. After the stock market crash Hoover increased taxes and Federal spending. He created many of the welfare programs that FDR later expanded into the New Deal. Romney is little different, he believes in massive government spending. Sure, he would like to spend on different things than Obama but it’s spending all the same.
I never suggested Jefferson was a perfect man. In the 19th century the debate was whether Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian government would be followed. Jefferson had argued for limited government, low taxes and little government spending. Hamilton on the other hand argued for higher taxes and massive Federal spending on internal “improvements”. (infrastructure) Hamilton also argued for a Federal bank and Federal oversight of finance. He also pushed the notion of “implied” powers in the Constitution. In other words, he lay the groundwork for the modern notion of a “living” constitution whose words don’t really matter.
1)The Whigs were the conservatives; the Democrats were the radicals. 2)George Washington (ever hear of him?) signed the First Bank of the United States into law on 2/25/1791. Despite this fact the Confederates and their apologists hypocritically and dishonestly maintain(ed) that Washington was one of them.
Homosexual marriage wasn’t an issue when Herbert Hoover was alive and as such it’s an irrelevant point to bring up.
No it is not, for the simple reason that the moral issues are what conservatism is all about. The whole "size of government" and economics issue is a sideshow. Only someone who believes that only matter exists would put economic issues in the center of his worldview.
After the stock market crash Hoover increased taxes and Federal spending. He created many of the welfare programs that FDR later expanded into the New Deal.
And yet Hoover was a hero to minarchist palaeoconservatives like Robert A. Taft.
Romney is little different, he believes in massive government spending. Sure, he would like to spend on different things than Obama but it’s spending all the same.
I am opposed to Romney, but primarily because of his moral stands. There is no such thing as a government that spends on nothing. Honestly, the world is falling apart from an inversion of good and evil and you're worried about money???
I never suggested Jefferson was a perfect man. In the 19th century the debate was whether Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian government would be followed. Jefferson had argued for limited government, low taxes and little government spending. Hamilton on the other hand argued for higher taxes and massive Federal spending on internal “improvements”. (infrastructure) Hamilton also argued for a Federal bank and Federal oversight of finance. He also pushed the notion of “implied” powers in the Constitution. In other words, he lay the groundwork for the modern notion of a “living” constitution whose words don’t really matter.
Yes, Hamilton believed in "implied powers," but so did about half of the people in the country at that time, including those who created the Constitution in the first place (which included Hamilton, but not Jefferson). The Federalist interpretation of the Constitution, like its Jeffersonian opponent, goes all the way back to the Founding. They form the basis of the original two party system. The notion that the Constitution was originally interpreted strictly and that the loose Hamiltonian construction was a later "heresy" is palaeoconservative garbage. Among other Federalists who believed in "implied powers" were George Washington, John Adams, John Jay, Fisher Ames, Gouverneur Morris, John Marshall, Noah Webster, and Paul Revere. Even anti-Federalist Patrick Henry, who opposed ratification of the Constitution, became a Federalist after it was ratified, arguing against the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (authored by Jefferson and Madison respectively). Their successors the Whigs included such icons as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. How anyone can seriously argue that all these great men were "heretics" from the original sense of the Constitution is beyond me. Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans were in the very best of Constitutional company.
In Hamiltonian thought "implied powers" did not grant the omnipotent power to the government or do away with limits. In order to be legitimate, an implied power had to have as its end a legitimate Constitutional objective and to not itself be proscribed by the Constitution. There is absolutely no comparison between Hamiltonian doctrine and that of the "progressives" and New Dealers (which began with William Jennings Bryan and the Populists, by the way).
Had Hamilton's will not prevailed over Jefferson's the Union would have lasted a few years and then fallen apart . . . or perhaps been conquered by Spain or some other foreign power. Hamilton's ideas turned the United States into the greatest industrial engine in world history.
Thomas Jefferson is the hero of every anti-Semite, bankophobe, and conspiracist who has ever come down the pike. At the exact same time he is an icon and rallying point for the Left because of his notorious freethought and his support of the Jacobins. FDR (your alleged "Hamiltonian") virtually deified Jefferson as the patron saint of the New Deal.
The Republican party did indeed contain radical and subversive elements at its inception because it was a single issue party (non-extension of slavery). This was a very "big tent" and encompassed people from religious fundamentalists to radical "free thought" and "free love" types. But these latter soon fell away to join the Democrat party (ironically, helping to elect palaeocon hero Grover Cleveland). What was left was the public morality element: the crusaders against slavery, polygamy, gambling, liquor, prostitution, and other such vices. The Republican party is the party of morality, puritan virtues, and rural America (outside the Solid South). I am proud and privileged to be able to say that my family has been Republican since Abraham Lincoln . . . and it is a Southern family!
Jeffersonianism, when detached from its Hamiltonian twin and promoted as THE "one true original" interpretation of the Constitution, is nothing but hot air.