[TheMercenary]

Hamilton championed the creation of a large national debt for the sake of having a large national debt. The reason he gave for this was that the owners of the debt would be the more affluent people of the country, who would then be tied to the government and always be supportive of it, just as welfare recipients are today. They would be sure to support future tax increases, he reasoned, to ensure that they would not be shortchanged on their principal and interest. "A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a public blessing," he said.

Thanks a lot, Al. Today’s national debt exceeds $9 trillion, and that figure does not count the additional tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and government pension liabilities. Every baby born is already thousands of dollars in debt.

A man as politically astute as Hamilton was most certainly had to be aware that the nature of politics would guarantee that a national debt would quickly become "excessive." (And it did.) He spent his entire adult life lobbying for "excessive" government and demeaning and scheming against those, like Jefferson, who opposed it. (Jefferson, in contrast, once said: "I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending, in an eminent degree, on the extinguishment of the public debt").

Hamilton was also the founding father of constitutional subversion. In contrast to Jefferson’s strict constructionist views, which sought to use the Constitution as a limitation on governmental powers, Hamilton thought of the Constitution as a document that could be "reinterpreted" by clever lawyers like himself and his political compatriot, Chief Justice John Marshall, to provide a "rubber stamp" on almost any governmental activity. He was the inventor of the subversive notion of "implied" powers of the Constitution. As Rossiter explained (approvingly): "It seems certain that Hamilton would have affixed a certain certificate of constitutionality to every last tax . . . . Hamilton took a large view of the power to tax because he took a large view of the power to spend."

Having failed to create a "national" government at the Constitutional convention, Hamilton and his colleagues set out to pervert the document and "remold the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy," wrote Rossiter. Hamiltonian judicial activists have succeeded beyond anything Hamilton could have imagined.

Hamilton did not lobby for the notorious Sedition Act that was enacted by his own Federalist Party (and which essentially made it illegal to criticize the government), but he did support it once it became law. Thus, he can also be considered to be one of the founding fathers of governmental assaults on free speech.

Hamilton’s Republic is a republic of excessive public debt; inflationary finance fueled by a central bank that is the cause of perpetual boom-and-bust cycles; a dictatorial executive branch aided and abetted by "black-robed deities" who have "reinterpreted" the Constitution so much that the founders would not even recognize what is called "constitutional law"; a tax burden that is even more excessive than that borne by medieval serfs; a standing army that is misused at the expense of genuine defense of America; an arrogant, imperialistic, and monopolistic government in Washington that rarely pays any attention at all to the citizens of the once-sovereign states; government policy that routinely benefits big, politically-connected businesses and wealthy individuals at the expense of the rest of society (neo-mercantilism); and protectionism.
Every one of these policies has been a curse on America. That is why every one of them, from central banking to public debt to judicial activism, was vigorously opposed by Hamilton’s nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, and his political heirs, until they were finally snuffed out for good by the Lincoln regime and the near total monopoly of power that the Republican Party enjoyed for the ensuing six decades.
The next time you hear Congressman Ron Paul, Republican candidate for president, calling for the abolition of the Fed and the income tax; a defense policy that defends America; drastic reductions in executive power; free trade and free markets; and a return to Constitutional principles, including the principle of states’ rights, you are being given a chance to finally put an end to Hamilton’s curse. Ron Paul is our Jefferson. Every other presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican, is a Big Government Hamiltonian, through and through.

November 27, 2007

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, (Three Rivers Press/Random House). His latest book is Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe (Crown Forum/Random House).