Posted on 12/14/2004 10:32:58 AM PST by groanup
The nation of commoners
Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin were skeptical about the common man and government.
By PERRY TREADWELL
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
This has been the year of Alexander Hamilton, with a new biography and a museum exhibit in New York City.
All that I remember about Hamilton from high school senior history taken more than a half-century ago is a quote attributed to him, "The People is a Beast."
More recently, a poem Hamilton may have read by a 17th century Italian cleric, Tommaso Campanella, has appeared. The first stanza goes:
The People is a beast of muddy brain,
That knows not its own force, and therefore stands
Loaded with wood and stone; the powerless hands
Of a mere child guide it with bit and rein.
Hamilton was quite wary of the ability of the common man to make rational choices. The Federalist Papers attest that he was not alone in his fears. As the poem anticipated, we now have petulant children guiding our country.
In spite of the protestations of evangelical Christians, the Constitution of the United States was written by the products of the Enlightenment. These men believed in the right of the people to govern themselves during a time when kings reigned. But they disagreed on the checks and balances necessary to perpetuate that dream.
One of the major fathers of that document, Benjamin Franklin, warned that the government "is likely to be well administered for a course of years and can only end in despotism as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."
It is a measure of the strength of the Constitution that it has taken more than 200 years for the government to become so corrupt as to re-quire a despot in the White House.
As Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." This last presidential election proved that some of the people can be fooled all the time.
They got fooled by spurious arguments while the real issues, such as war, economics and the environment, were ignored.
It is no surprise that the Southern red states (the Bible Belt) have the worst health care, the worst educational systems and the highest divorce rates. Residents have become consumers bought off by their wants supplied by malls.
Muslim Irshad Manji, who has tried to reform her own religion, comments on American values: "I could have become a runaway materialist, a robotic mall rat who resorts to retail therapy in pursuit of fulfillment. I didn't. That's because religion introduces competing claims. It injects a tension that compels me to think and allows me to avoid fundamentalisms of my own."
As a former teacher, I can attest that critical thinking is quite uncommon among students today. Just look at the feeding frenzy developed over the Thanksgiving buying. TV ads show people crashing through doors to get to the malls in the middle of the night.
The electorate has been bought off by the Roman example of "bread and games." The bread is the apparently cheap goods flooding in from abroad. The games are the violent sports in the new coliseums around the country: football, boxing and now basketball. The games appear on more than 100 channels: unreal reality, fear factors, inane sitcoms, in-your-face rap, shout talk shows and more sports.
The United States has become a strange animal, half theocracy, half plutocracy. We have returned to the theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, figuratively burning witches (gays and lesbians) and hanging Quakers (Muslims).
Consumers of religions sold on Sundays listen to shouters replacing Christian love with Old Testament fear leaning heavily on a vengeful God rather than the Prince of Peace. Americans seem to need to create enemies to destroy, on the battlefield or on the playing field.
While the United States tries to govern the world by spending more than any other nation or group of nations on the military, China and India, followed by the European Union, are becoming economic giants.
The United States will be following in their dust. The life of the U.S. Constitution is being smothered by the theocrats and the plutocrats. Hamilton and Franklin were right.
• Perry Treadwell is a retired Emory University professor.
Wow - thanks for the recommendation. I went to Amazon and ordered it for my Christmas present to myself! It gets great reviews - 5 stars - from the nine reviews posted on Amazon.
Actually, AH saved the country from Aaron Burr becoming president. That's a good thing. We should be eternally grateful to Hamilton for this if for nothing else. All of the founding fathers were concerned about the mob mentality of the common man. Look at how "democracy" works in some places and you can see how right they were to have concern. That's why we are a constitutional republic. Wisdom these men possessed!
You're in for a treat. I couldn't put it down.
Very good idea!!! M. Stanton Evans is the greatest.
I remember one of his columns which asked the rhetorical question, "Can there be such a thing as a Leftwing Death Squad" and then he cited the Washington Post for always using the phrase Rightwing Death Squad for any murder of a Leftisit in El Salvador but attrrbuted the murders of government or Rightists to "the military wing of the FMLN" What could the Post say in response??? Evans had em.
But doesn't this election show that they are getting smarter? Treadwell interprets this as their getting dumber. No, the lockstep idiot vote is being taken over by the carefully informed vote due to new media, etc.
Yeah, the voters voted for the most pro-big government president since LBJ. Is that smarter? I suppose it depends on your point of view.
Kind of radical, but it would have been an interesting world if we had done it.
No. They voted for big intrusive government again.
No, the lockstep idiot vote is being taken over by the carefully informed vote due to new media, etc.
Carefully informed? LOL
I hate to tell you guys but you're not going to wake up one day and find that the Federal Gov't has been cut in half. It takes time and if you can't see the progress that's being made you're not listening. You guys vote libertarian?
That's the famous quote by PT Barnum. It is often attributed to Lincoln, but historians have now concluded that he did not say it.
Progress? You mean the biggest increases in government since LBJ? That is regress rather than progress.
Can't find Perry Treadwell on the University Website.
As an alumnus, disappointing on several levels, but not surprizing.
You make that up all by yourself? Because I know no one else had any such childish visions.
It takes time and if you can't see the progress that's being made you're not listening.
If you can't see that there is no net progress, you are delusional.
People are bamboozled by the two (?) parties. And many of the delusional people who think the Republicans have made any progress in making government smaller and returning our freedoms are right here on this forum. And no, I didn't vote for the Libertarian candidate for President, not that it's any of your business. I know you just asked that so you could find a way to attack the messenger and change the subject.
Please name one program that has been eliminated since the Republicans took control of all the branches of government.
Yawn all you want, but Emory's a top twenty university. That doesn't mean the author isn't an idiot, of course. Even Harvard/Princeton had/has Cornel West.
Who pi**ed in your cornflakes this morning? I was simply pointing out to you that Republicans right now are the lesser of two evils. You have to start somewhere. What choice did we have on November 2?
Are you sure it isn't the lessee?
Given this, it is altogether that once in office Kerry would have brought about smaller increases than Bush. In part, this would be because, unlike Bush, he probably would have been constrained by a re-energized Republican Congress. Under Dubya, of course, the Congress is just a rubber stamp.
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