We Worship Jefferson, But We Have Become Hamilton's America [Wall Street Journal article]

Wall Street Journal | February 4, 2004 | Cynthia Crossen

[lawdog]

Regardless of one's "take"..these posts are an excellent example of Free Republic at it's best.Most freepers are more qualified than many of todays "teachers" spewing the standard feel good crap taught in the "public skool" system.

Your post was excellent. Thanks.

[cajungirl]

No I guess not but it seemed to me the DOI didn't need that. I guess he like most of us just went on a rant. Did we really need a reason to declare we were independent. Not unless one granted the British alot of natural power over us. so maybe he addressed that,,like we had to demolish ole George to justify our DOI.

[cajungirl]

I am a rank neophyte here with only impressions so take my opinions as such!

[bvw]

I like both Hamilton and Jefferson. Hamilton was Jewish. Jackson, who knows? It was Hamilton who led the effective Federal put down of the whiskey rebellion in 1794, Jackson who led the Federal removal of rebellious Indians 1830 through 1835's "Trail of Tears".

The Premable to the Constitution begins: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, ..." Jackson's actions establish Justice in those previously wild territories and insure domestic tranquility for those living within them and nearby. Hamilton's action was both to form a more perfect union by establishing the authority of Federal excise revenue taxation in the States, and to insure domestic tranquility by putting down that rebellion and thus staving off others by example.

Jackson was right about hard money, Hamilton right about soft money. It is the Federal Sovereign and sole power to coin HARD money. And we desperately need a circulating hard money.

Fractional reserve money -- that is banks and paper supported by fractional values are a PRIVATE matter, and while may be regulated should also be liberated -- for they are overly regulated today.

My favorite example is the old "Bill of Lading" -- that is a form of soft money. A paper bill of goods that lists and values a full ship's cargo in transit to a far port. While that cargo is not landed at the market, its cargo converted to currency, the bill may be traded (at a discount) and shared out into smaller fractions.

It wasn't Hamilton's mistake that such fractional soft money analoges and alternate currencies became exclusively and overbearingly the sufferance of Federal authority. No -- that is a more modern invention. FDR's and Nixon's, and such cunning modern thieves in the halls and contact lists of power.

And that FDR-Nixon noveau grand John-Law-scheme of fully fiat currency ... that has NO relation whatsoever to either Jackson or Hamilton, and hardly at all to money, soft or hard.

[bvw]

Scenic Sounds interpretes Hamilton's views too broadly, projecting them too far -- evidently so as to hold up some sock-pupper of Hamilton to bolster Scenic Sound's own theory of current Federal powers.

[Deliberator]

"Hamilton, on the other hand, maintained the clause confers a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated, is not restricted in meaning by the grant of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States."

If this correctly represents Hamilton's position, he is no conservative hero.

[bvw]

Ditto.

[Deliberator]

Consider instead a case involving potential water-borne diseases in the groundwater system. Would I, as you next-door neighbor, be permitted to have you forced under the law to get rid of your well and septic system

If they posed a clear and present danger of contagion, yes. Certainly urban life makes clear and present dangers of contagion more possible, but that does not blur the essential concepts of freedom and liberty.

and replace them with costly connections to a public utility?

No (although that may be the only practical alternative to a well and septic system).

For that matter, how does the whole concept of a "public utility" fit into what the original U.S. Constitution envisioned as individual liberties?

The Constitution permits no federal public utilities.

[Deliberator]

Your thoughts on post #86?

[bvw]

tapaine: You are usually on top of things ... that post ... you must be sleepy or have the flu. JustshutupandTakeIt has done a superb job.

[bvw]

precisely what Hamilton feared

Hamilton was for limited, enumerated powers and yet the full POWER to see tham through. The Preample is CLEAR: "To form a more perfect Union". That means divorce -- secession -- is a impossibility, except by amendment to the Constitution itself.

[bvw]

It taxes my reading skills, and I must go now ... (to my sister ... my brother-in-law's father is on his death bed and my sister is with her own sick son at the hospital.)

[winodog]

Bump for after work

[Alberta's Child]

I may be wrong about this, but I thought the whiskey tax was assessed throughout the thirteen states (at least in Virginia and North Carolina) but was dropped in these other states because of opposition in the state legislatures (basically, the states passed their own laws refusing to send any excise taxes to the Federal government).

[Deliberator]

Very sorry to hear that ... I'll say a prayer for them.

[PogySailor]

Bump for later reading.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Hamilton did not believe in any "right" to secede. (This was one of the reasons he was so anti-Burr)

Madison did not believe in any "right" to secede. (He explicitly stated in a letter to Hamilton that once a state joined the Union it was in it forever.)

Washington did not believe in any "right" to secede. (Most of his Farewell Address is pointed at the scroundrels, crooks and mountebanks who considered such a course.)

Jackson did not believe in any "right" to secede. (He was ready to hand the Fools in South Carolina edging in that direction.)

Lincoln did not believe in any "right" to secede. (He saved the Union when the RAT Insurrection was attempted in 1861.)

Even Jefferson did not believe in any "right" to secede. (His inaugural address in 1801 held its advocates up to ridicule and scorn.)

I will happily join such "tyrants" as these in opposition to the honor graduates of Clown College who are incapable of understanding (or unwilling to admit) that the constitution would be meaningless with such a "right."

US Congress "We hearby declare War on China."
Massachusetts "We don't want to fight China, we SECEDE." Oh, yeah this is clearly a "right."

While Texas may be a special case due to its joining the Union as a seperate country none of the other states have any such rights. The Union was formed by the American PEOPLE not the states which is the misunderstanding underlying all these bogus arguments about a "right" to secede.

It is a logical impossiblity. Even the Articles of Confederation stated that the Union was perpetual thus, the goal of the Constitution "To form a more perfect Union" would not have been met by allowing the reformed Union (Union 2.0) to be weaker than the earlier version (Union 1.0).

BTW you can shove the namecalling UYA. :^)

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Hamilton was for limited, enumerated powers and yet the full POWER to see tham through. The Preample is CLEAR: "To form a more perfect Union". That means divorce -- secession -- is a impossibility, except by amendment to the Constitution itself.

Dude, you've gone way, way, way off the deep end.

If the founders had wanted the preamble to say that, they would have written something along the lines of to form a more perfect Union, which, as a requirement of Its perfection, is necessarily indissoluble for all eternity...

But, of course, they wrote no such thing.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Your understanding of the events of 1800 are a little askew particularly wrt Hamilton's role. He did discuss Burr's character and unfittness for the office of the presidency but spread no rumors merely facts. Burr was well known as a scoundrel and is the prototype Big City Machine Politician just with a little more style. Tammaney Hall produced his big political victories and once launched plagued the nation for another 100+ yrs.

Hamilton knew Burr very well having worked with him for 15 yrs in various court cases. Burr was an excellent politician and lawyer but had no core beliefs worth praising. An earlier poster compared him accurately to Bill Clinton.

Nor did he challenge Hamilton to a duel because of the election manuvering in 1800. That was only one of the matters in which Hamilton thwarted him. It was the role Hamilton played in the governor's election in 1804 in New York which was the straw that....

Hamilton's life was spent in service to the United States of America and his death destroyed the political life of his killer.

[Scenic Sounds]

If this correctly represents Hamilton's position, he is no conservative hero.

[The quotes below in blue are all from Treasury Secretary Hamilton's 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures to the House of Representatives.]

Hamilton believed that the "general welfare" clause in Article I, Section 8 provided the Congress with authority that was not confined to the other, more specific grants of power itemized in that same section:

"A question has been made concerning the constitutional right of the government of the United States to apply this species of encouragement, but there is certainly no good foundation for such a question. The national legislature has express authority ``To lay and Collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare'' with no other qualifications than that ``all duties, imposts and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States, that no capitation or other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to numbers ascertained by a census or enumeration taken on the principles prescribed in the Constitution,'' and that ``no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.'' These three qualifications excepted, the power to raise money is plenary, and indefinite; and the objects to which it may be appropriated are no less comprehensive, than the payment of the public debts and the providing for the common defense and ``general welfare.'' The terms ``general welfare'' were doubtless intended to signify more than was expressed or imported in those which preceded; otherwise numerous exigencies incident to the affairs of a nation would have been left without a provision. The phrase is as comprehensive as any that could have been used; because it was not fit that the constitutional authority of the Union, to appropriate its revenues should have been restricted within narrower limits than the ``general welfare'' and because this necessarily embraces a vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition."

And who did Hamilton believe was constitutionally empowered to decide what is meant by the term "general wefare"? The Congress:

"It is therefore of necessity left to the discretion of the national legislature, to pronounce, upon the objects, which concern the general welfare, and for which under that description, an appropriation of money is requisite and proper. And there seems to be no room for a doubt that whatever concerns the general interests of learning of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce are within the sphere of the national councils as far as regards an application of money."

Hamilton felt that the only Constitutional limitation on the power to spend for the "general welfare" concerned the geographical requirement that the program be applicable throughout the entire country:

"The only qualification of the generality of the phrase in question, which seems to be admissible, is this--That the object to which an appropriation of money is to be made be general and not local; its operation extending in fact, or by possibility, throughout the Union, and not being confined to a particular spot."

"No objection ought to arise to this construction from a supposition that it would imply a power to do whatever else should appear to Congress conducive to the general welfare. A power to appropriate money with this latitude which is granted too in express terms would not carry a power to do any other thing, not authorized in the Constitution, either expressly or by fair implication."