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.”