A review of How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America by Brion McClanahan, Regnery History, 2017.
A thinking American must choose between Hamilton and Jefferson, whose contrary visions of the future were contested in the first days of the Constitution. If you are happy with big government, big banks, big business, big military, and judicial dictatorship, then you have Alexander Hamilton to thank. His legacy of nationalism, centralisation, crony capitalism, and military-industrial complex is all around us.
If you prefer the Jeffersonian version of an American regime (or even if you don’t), Brion McClanahan’s new book is for you—How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America. McClanahan, who is proving to be one of the ablest truly relevant historians of our time, has given us a definitive, deeply-researched chapter and verse and long perspective of who this bad man was and how he is, Constitutionally, the fountain of our current discontents.
When Hillary Clinton called we Americans “deplorables” (in contrast to the rich foreign sophisticates who surround her) she was simply channeling Alexander Hamilton who said that “the people are a great beast.”
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I was taught more about Jefferson in high school than any of the other founding fathers. My HS history teacher in rural south GA, in the late 70's, was working on her history thesis for her doctorate on Jeffersonian laws and politics.
ReplyDeleteI was taught more about Jefferson in high school than any of the other founding fathers
DeleteCertainly more than Hamilton.
Hamilton was my least favorite - married into the
ReplyDeleteRothschild clan says it all. Wasn't he challenged to a
duel?
Ye, Burr killed him.
DeleteI didn't know Hamilton married into the Rothschilds, but I'd liked his views somewhat and Jefferson's somewhat.
ReplyDeleteI'm Antifederalist if having to pick a side, and that tends to be more Jeffersonian, but I dislike the idea that one must choose one side or the other in its entirety.