Posted on 07/03/2003 5:59:18 AM PDT by Tribune7
On July 4, Americans everywhere will, at some point, have an opportunity to hear the words of the Declaration of Independence as written by Thomas Jefferson.
It is, without doubt, his best-known work. Jefferson, however, wrote volumes during his life and, not surprisingly, had many things to say concerning a myriad of subjects. He was, after all, a firm believer in "free speech and free press" and he often said precisely what was on his mind.
The following is a small sampling of quotations by Jefferson, which reflect his timeless wisdom on a variety of subjects. Small wonder that he became known as the "Man of the People" and the "Sage of Monticello."
"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."
Letter to his daughter Martha, May 5, 1787: "...Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787: "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
(Excerpt) Read more at countypressonline.com ...
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Assuming that such treatment is necessary. For free-marketeers, government's "help" is as much appreciated as having your head crushed in a vice. Wheter or not the guy turning the crank is a doctor, it's not helping. The market is self-regulating, and as such requires no such coersion.
I would not call those opposed to Hamiltonianism "weak" or "treasonous,"
Then you should find whoever wrote post #8 using your ID and beat them about the head, chest, breasts, and neck.
No no, now that congress and the executive are dominated by "conservatives," all those alphabet soup programs are about to end, don'tcha know!
Next to Abe Clinton as first, I would agree with you.
You are still playing word games to avoid any further substantive debate. Listen to your hero Alex: "Monarch is an indefinite term" that "marks not either the degree or duration of power."
In other words, it all comes down to the exercise of force. Thank you for clearing that up.
Let's see, Hamilton's political descendants gave us a national bank, internal improvements that have practically broken the back of this nation, strong centralized government even Clay wouldn't have wished on anyone, and oh yes a completely unbalanced form of checks between the national government and the states. I agree Hamilton would have made quite the Republican today wouldn't he?
But doesn't it always?
The more I've had time to think about this, the more I like the original comparison between economic interventionalism and medical intervention. Assuming 17th century medicine and technology, each was probably equally effective in Hamilton's time.
Nice try.
I'm saying that the government indoctrination centers produce uneducated kids. That doesn't mean that the kids are stupid. And the young men and women who join the armed services are also trained to do their jobs by people who are truly interested in them being the best that they can be.
Do I have this right? You look down on Jefferson, worship Lincoln, and think that public education is just fine?
And I am speaking of the Hamiltonian Federalists of both his own time and the years that followed. Like it or not, they are direct adherents and direct heirs to his policies. That they took them that much further than Hamilton did originally is indicative of the dangers posed by those same policies.
You will not find ME arguing for protectionism.
Good.
However, it is clear that a new nation is a special case since most of the assumptions supporting Free TRade are violated by conditions such as those surrounding American independence.
Not really. Trade generation occurs by way of entrepreneurship, which is in turn fueled by an incentive to achieve gains that were unrealized previously. When you protect an industry, including in infant nations, you essentially curtail that incentive and permit a lesser degree of success to occur strictly upon the artificial crutch of government. As a result the industry never learns to fend for itself and can never truly compete on its own.
Slavery cannot allow capitalism since one of the essentials for capitalist development is a free labor market.
Labor is an attribute of an economy, not its substance. While indeed capitalism functions best with a free labor market and anything else is indeed an impediment to it, the absence of a strictly free labor market does not alone remove capitalism. Just the same, a welfare state today impedes capitalism severely but its presence and corresponding absence of full property rights does not in itself mean that some ammount of capitalism and in fact a reasonably large ammount of it, exists in America today.
There was no opponent of Hamilton who could hold their own in a debate over economics or finance.
Sure there were. Argrarian free marketeers held their own then just as their ideas are accepted to this day.
This was the chief reason they had to resort to lies and distortions of his beliefs.
According to you, calling Hamilton a monarchist based on the fact that in a prominent speech he gave he heavily advocated a form of monarchism for the american executive is a "distortion" of his beliefs even though that speech is well documented. In doing so you willfully ignore a key piece of evidence against your claim in order to ensure that, at least in your own mind, it remains unchallenged. Therefore it is with little credibility that you make vague allegations of distortion against Hamilton's opponents.
Specie had fled the country during the War, it did not return until Hamilton established the Bank and the Constitution put an end to the States power to confiscate property outside the rule of law.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Intrinsically valued items that leave during times of heavy import caused by situations such as a war tend to return in times of greater stability. In other words, when you import guns and supplies for war you have to pay for them and, absent other means of trade, coin or credit is used. Hence gold will go out as payment. But absent a need for wartime imports, a nation could focus its produce on exportables such as cash crops. Nations abroad have to pay for those crops when they recieve them, hence the gold returns in payment.
Perhaps your attempts at comedy would be more effective if you were addressing them at the proper target. I was speaking of the chartering of the 2d Bank (the one Jackson destroyed) not the post Jackson panic caused entirely by his hamhanded approach to finance.
Then you should specify. There were many bank-related financial crisises in American history. By far the most famous of the early ones was the predecessor of the 1837 panic, thus it is not unreasonable to assume a reference to bank-related financial crisis is to that particular incident.
Nor was the Depression caused by the Fed, though it didn't help by choking off the money supply.
Indeed it was, at least in the sense that a typical business cycle downturn was turned into a full fledged disaster by the federal reserve's bungling in the 1920's. Check your economic stats.
Money is always created by governments otherwise something would replace the official money.
Not so. Government money is a later invention predicated upon prior existing mediums of exchange that typically have intrinsic value to them. Governments tend to come in later first by establishing standards of measurement and mintage, then by establishing reciprocals backed by the intrinsically valued good (i.e. coinage), and finally by replacing that good entirely with paper claims of credit (what we have today).
Gold and silver were not money to the Incas, how could that be?
Perhaps the Incas found something else of intrinsic value to be more useful for that function, or valued gold and silver differently than the western world.
Your economic theories are as ill-founded and dubious as your historical ones.
You are one to talk considering that you seem to believe Hamiltonian interventionism and federalized monetary policy are institutions of a capitalist nature.
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