This is the expanded text of a letter to the editor of the New York Times which I wrote in response to an op-ed by historical writer Ron Chernow. Of course, the “All the News That Fits” Times did not publish the letter.
In his op-ed article published September 23 entitled “The Founding Fathers versus the Tea Party”, Ron Chernow continues the habit now common in the traditional media of lecturing the Tea Party without bothering to actually study it. If Mr. Chernow had devoted a small fraction of the research skill which he brings to his excellent books, he would have quickly learned that the conservative historians read by Tea Partiers are very well aware of Alexander Hamilton’s efforts to pioneer federal government activism. They are also well aware of the conflict between Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison over the role and extent of the federal government and the proper balance between private liberty and energetic government. The Tea Party does not invoke the latter two founders because they are uninformed about Hamilton’s views. Jefferson and Madison are the heroes of the Tea Party because in our times the federal government has become pervasively and overwhelmingly Hamiltonian. Tea Partiers have resurrected Jefferson and Madison precisely because they feel that we need to reset that balance by re-introducing a more Jeffersonian sensibility to counter-act a massive excess of Hamiltonian government activism.
Indeed, as Mr. Chernow should know, Hamilton recognized the dangers of excessive public debt, and saw the private sector, not the public sector, as the principal generator of national wealth. It probably does Hamilton an injustice to describe our current government as Hamiltonian, because it has gone far beyond even Hamilton’s views of the proper scope of government. Our modern government might better be described as Wilsonian, for it was Woodrow Wilson who rejected the Democratic Party’s Jeffersonian heritage and instead, invoking Hamilton, actually expanded the role of the national government to hinder rather than assist private enterprise as contemplated (unwisely) by Hamilton. Although others cover these subjects in far more depth, Timely Renewed treats the work of all four men (Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Wilson) in their own words, and attempts to trace thereby the vast expansion of our national government from the founding to the present day.
Reply to Ron Chernow on the Founders vs. the Tea Party
This is the expanded text of a letter to the editor of the New York Times which I wrote in response to an op-ed by historical writer Ron Chernow. Of course, the “All the News That Fits” Times did not publish the letter.
In his op-ed article published September 23 entitled “The Founding Fathers versus the Tea Party”, Ron Chernow continues the habit now common in the traditional media of lecturing the Tea Party without bothering to actually study it. If Mr. Chernow had devoted a small fraction of the research skill which he brings to his excellent books, he would have quickly learned that the conservative historians read by Tea Partiers are very well aware of Alexander Hamilton’s efforts to pioneer federal government activism. They are also well aware of the conflict between Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison over the role and extent of the federal government and the proper balance between private liberty and energetic government. The Tea Party does not invoke the latter two founders because they are uninformed about Hamilton’s views. Jefferson and Madison are the heroes of the Tea Party because in our times the federal government has become pervasively and overwhelmingly Hamiltonian. Tea Partiers have resurrected Jefferson and Madison precisely because they feel that we need to reset that balance by re-introducing a more Jeffersonian sensibility to counter-act a massive excess of Hamiltonian government activism.
Indeed, as Mr. Chernow should know, Hamilton recognized the dangers of excessive public debt, and saw the private sector, not the public sector, as the principal generator of national wealth. It probably does Hamilton an injustice to describe our current government as Hamiltonian, because it has gone far beyond even Hamilton’s views of the proper scope of government. Our modern government might better be described as Wilsonian, for it was Woodrow Wilson who rejected the Democratic Party’s Jeffersonian heritage and instead, invoking Hamilton, actually expanded the role of the national government to hinder rather than assist private enterprise as contemplated (unwisely) by Hamilton. Although others cover these subjects in far more depth, Timely Renewed treats the work of all four men (Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Wilson) in their own words, and attempts to trace thereby the vast expansion of our national government from the founding to the present day.