In The Real Lincoln (highly recommended), Thomas DiLorenzo took apart the 16th President. Here he takes apart Alexander Hamiliton, resurrected star of his own Broadway musical. From DiLorenzo at lewrockwell.com:
When former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke got wind of the fact that the U.S. Treasury Department was considering replacing Alexander Hamilton on the ten-dollar bill he threw a fit of protest. Writing on his Brookings Institution blog, Bernanke said that he was “appalled” that “the greatest of the founding fathers” (and the founding father of central banking) would be mistreated in this way.
The New York Times immediately weighed in, apparently outraged that such a famous New Yorker would ever be demoted in such a way. The neocons were especially incensed over the proposal. After all, David Brooks of the New York Times has claimed that Hamilton single-handedly “created” American capitalism all by himself with help from no one, not even God Himself.
Pat Buchanan, who once said to me that “Hamilton is my hero,” must have lost a lot of sleep over it as well. Around the same time, New Yorkers began flocking to a new Broadway musical named “Hamilton” that repeats the old statist tale about how allegedly wonderful the statist/imperialist Hamilton was compared to the strict constructionist, “that government is best which governs least,” Thomas Jefferson.
The establishment adores Hamilton (and hates Jefferson) because Hamilton was a consummate statist and imperialist. He persistently denounced his nemesis Jefferson for his “excessive concern for liberty.” When President Jefferson announced in his first inaugural address that his foreign policy would be “honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none,” and that “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government . . .”, Hamilton denounced it as “the symptom of a pygmy mind.” Hamilton wanted a more centrally-planned and government-subsidized and supervised economy, and was itching to start a war with France in the name of what he called “imperial glory.”
When the constitutional convention quickly discarded Hamilton’s proposal of a permanent president (i.e., a king) who would appoint all the state governors who would have veto power over all state legislation, effectively destroying any semblance of federalism, Hamilton loudly denounced the Constitution as “a frail and worthless fabric.”
Hamilton’s objective was “to build the foundations of a new empire,” wrote Hamilton biographer Clinton Rossiter. Just like the British empire, against which the American Revolution had just been fought. Hamilton “had perhaps the highest respect for the government of any important American political thinker who ever lived,” wrote Rossiter. No wonder the government establishment has always been “in love” with Hamilton.
To continue reading: The Establishment’s Love Affair With Hamilton
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