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To: Cincinatus; Timber Rattler
You said that Timber Rattler’s assertion that Hamilton was
the original”Big Government” guy was .....”Wrong”.

Let's examine a quick summary of Hamilton and see if you are right.

Alexander Hamilton was probably the strongest supporter of the trend towards aristocratic government. By early 1789 he was the treasurer of the U.S. and continually used all his influence to work toward a aristocracy.

According to Hamilton himself, only the “well bred and rich” as he expressed it, were to be recognized in governmental circles. “Lower” people, as he called them, were to have little or no part in government and would be held in check by “coercion of laws and coercion of arms”.

Hamilton's party became known as the Federalists and attempted to install a more powerful federal government (aristocracy) as opposed to Thomas Jefferson's Anti-federalist party which was pushing for state's rights.

This Democratic-Republican Party was founded in opposition to the Federalist party. Together with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison founded the Democratic-Republican Party, a forerunner to the Democratic Party.

Their Platform centered on the rights of states, agricultural interests, and decentralized government.

This was in direct opposition to Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and the Federalists.

40 posted on 05/28/2012 8:22:00 AM PDT by PeaRidge
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To: PeaRidge; x; All
Alexander Hamilton was probably the strongest supporter of the trend towards aristocratic government. By early 1789 he was the treasurer of the U.S. and continually used all his influence to work toward a aristocracy.

Conservatism is not populism. Most "right wing" individuals, movements, and tendencies are anti-populist (anti-democratic) and aristocratic. Thus it is hard to understand anti-aristocratic conservatism.

But Jefferson was hardly an oppressed peasant himself. While Hamilton favored a manufacturing/moneyed aristocracy (an aristocracy which theoretically anyone could work his way into, Hamilton's own life being an example) Jefferson was the spokesman of an aristocracy of a very different kind: landed, semi-feudal and almost monarchical. This was an aristocracy one almost had to be born into. In Europe the Right wing is very "Jeffersonian," in that it is anti-capitalist, agrarian, and monarchic. How on earth did Jeffersonianism get the reputation of something popular and democratic?

Alexander Hamilton was not perfect, and neither is industrial capitalism. Unchecked, it is very corrosive not only of the natural environment but of traditional institutions as well, and contrary to what some capitalist utopians think, it doesn't reward everyone who tries to play the game (the myth being that only the lazy suffer). But still, Hamilton was far preferable to the armchair Jacobin Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson's admirers also continually overlook his (and his party's) support of the French Revolution (and nowadays neo-Confederate Jeffersonians have the unmitigated gall to accuse Hamiltonians of being "Jacobins!") as well as his notorious religious heterodoxy and radicalism. The Jeffersonian party may look like the "party of liberty" to people safely ensconced in the twenty-first century, but at the time people were terrified that a Jeffersonian victory would lead to Jacobin terror and irreligion here as had happened in France.

There is no "official" interpretation of the original intent of the Constitution. From the very beginning there have been two schools of thought represented by Hamilton and Jefferson. But neither are implicated in the horrendous situation in which we find ourselves today.

Jeffersonian "conservatives" (particularly the neo-Confederates) need to ask themselves what business they have attacking "aristocracy" and celebrating "the people." The latter is best left to the Left.

The arch-Jeffersonian republican was John Randolph of Roanoke who famously quipped "I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality."

102 posted on 05/31/2012 9:41:35 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (Ki-hagoy vehamamlakhah 'asher lo'-ya`avdukh yove'du; vehagoyim charov yecheravu!)
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