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The Federalists (the party of Adams and Hamilton) were more Big Government than the Democratic-Republicans (the party of Jefferson and Madison), but itâ€™s something like an argument between todayâ€™s traditionalist conservatives and conservatives of a more libertarian bent.

I'm happy to see that some people get this.

It gets tiresome to read that Hamilton and the Federalists were Proto-New Deal Democrats or Proto-Obamas because they supported "big government." The "big government" that Hamilton and the Federalists supported was a protective tariff for America's nascent industries and Federal investment in infrastructure, hardly radical socialist positions. In fact, they were criticized by Anti-Federalists like Jefferson as reactionaries (either Jefferson or Madison accused Hamilton of being a British-style Mercantilist and wanting a monarchy minus the monarch - this puts the Federalists to the Right of the anti-Federalists, not on the Left).

In any case, if only today's political spectrum were made up of Hamiltonian Federalists (traditional conservatives) versus Jeffersonian Anti-Federalists (libertarians), we'd be a big step ahead of what today's Republicans and Democrats have to offer.