Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: lentulusgracchus

I do not see this as liberalism except if one interprets it solely as love of big government. Yes, I know, the liberal parts of the court voted for it while the conservative portion dissented. However, this does not define liberalism or conservatism anymore than does conservative republicanism means big business interests. If that were the case, then the situation would be reversed (the liberal portion dissenting).


1,194 posted on 06/23/2005 7:59:14 PM PDT by JBev (Ahem)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1181 | View Replies ]


To: JBev
I do not see this as liberalism except if one interprets it solely as love of big government.

It's Hamiltonianism, which is the father of Lincolnian protosocialism (Homestead Act, income taxes) and access capitalism/corporate welfarism.

Big-government "conservatives", aren't. They're conservative in the European sense, that Tories were conservative in America during the Revolution.

Hamilton's and the Federalists' positions on the various liberty and property issues could best be described as Toryism and royalism but without the King; they were opposed by the Patriots, who became the Antifederalists and then Democratic Republicans (Jeffersonian Democrats, we call them now), who were the 18th-century liberals.

It was the Patriots who pushed for liberty and independence in the Revolution and fully intended to frustrate the Federalists' drive to bring back Leviathan government. The Federalists had the same conception of government generally as Edmund Burke and the English Tories, but wanted the powers of government deployed only as their own tool and servant rather than the King's.

It was also the old Patriots -- Patrick Henry, George Mason, John Hancock -- the old Liberty firebrands -- who pushed, against Hamilton's scorn that he poured out in Federalist Nos. 84 and 85, the last issues in the series, for our Bill of Rights. They didn't trust Hamilton and the business crowd. Thank God they didn't. Can you imagine what our lives would be like without the Bill of Rights?

Does this help identify the players and their interest in this issue? The liberty interest here was defeated by the ukase of the Supreme Court, and the Court's opinion was a decision very similar to what John Jay and John Marshall, good Federlist men both of them, would have written in similar circumstances, given the existence of eminent domain at the time (it didn't exist yet -- the termites still had a ways to chew).

1,267 posted on 06/23/2005 9:47:55 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1194 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson