Just to be up front with everyone, this is a repost of a diary from a couple of weeks ago. It withered on the vine, so am reposting.
What provokes me to write this is the Tea Party idea that they represent the vision of the founders. they wear t-shirts that read "Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton: Right-Wing Extremists." Poppycock! Balderdash!
Liberals represent the vision of the founders far more than conservatives do, and we need to let Americans know it. More below.
Where does the Tea Party get this idea that it represents the vision of the founders? From Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, among others. The founders, insists Beck, promised that government would remain small. Then, under Theodore Roosevelt, government lurched away from the Constitution, embracing a new authority to tax and to regulate. Things have deteriorated ever since.
The Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh understanding of the founders' vision comes from Cold War era history textbooks written for students in junior high. [Beck takes his instruction from the Mormon ideologue W. Cleon Skousen, too, but I won't go into that here.] Textbook writers—-concerned about Soviet totalitarianism—-stressed the founders’ opposition to taxes and their love for small government, government that gave brave entrepreneurs unfettered liberty to create wealth.
The Cold War understanding of the founders is partly correct. As the great historian Joyce Appleby has shown in several books, some of the founders, some of the time, espoused free markets. But the Cold War understanding is simplistic.
Liberals have greater claims to the founding legacy, though few realize it. Liberal politics originates in the visions of both Alexander Hamilton, the great Federalist, and his arch-enemy, Thomas Jefferson, the great Democratic-Republican. True, Hamilton and Jefferson were bitter enemies, but both were our progenitors.
The first epic argument under the Constitution involved federal assumption of state war debts. Hamilton lobbied for assumption in order to strengthen ties between creditors (holders of government securities) and the U.S. A federal debt, he reasoned, would give rich creditors cause to support a strong central government with the power to tax.
Jefferson and his ally, James Madison, strenuously argued against assumption precisely because it would empower the rich. To profit from their securities, the rich would require the government to tax the people. Neither Jefferson nor Madison objected to taxes per se; they objected to taxes intended to redistribute wealth upward in order to create aristocracy.
The next big fight concerned the creation of the Bank of the United States. Hamilton wanted a bank to hold federal deposits, to regulate currency, and to provide loans for industrial development. Jefferson and Madison cried foul. The Constitution, they argued, gave the government no right to create banks. Behind their principled stand was their fear of aristocracy. The bank, insisted Jefferson and Madison, would create inequality. It would create wealthy industrialists and pauperized commoners. "Let our workshops remain in Europe," inveighed Jefferson. Indeed Jefferson once said that he feared the tyrannical power of banks more than he feared standing armies.
On both assumption and the bank, Hamilton won. What occurred in the short term was a 1790s bubble much like that of 2007-08, but of course much briefer and smaller. Credit was too loose; investors went bankrupt; no bailouts ensued.
Hamilton was nevertheless right: the federal government needed to direct economic development through loans and subsidies. Too, the federal government needed to regulate currency and lending. Hamilton also won insofar as his "implied powers" interpretation of the Constitution prevailed over Jefferson’s literalist (Tea Party) interpretation.
Thanks to Hamilton’s vision, the economy flourished. The Whig Party took up where Hamilton left off by pushing for high tariffs to protect American manufactures and for government-subsidized infrastructure. Whigs called it "The American System."
To some extent, the American System prevailed at the federal level, especially in regard to turnpike, canal, and railroad subsidies, postal services, lighthouse construction and harbor improvements, common schools, state universities, and high tariffs to promote native manufactures. The American System succeeded most dramatically, however, at the state level--especially in the North and Midwest--where legislators put the people's money to work in building infrastructure. The result was dynamism.
Jefferson’s vision, meanwhile, animated the Democratic Party that grew up around President Andrew Jackson in 1832. Jackson killed the second Bank of the United States, though the Supreme Court continued to recognize its constitutionality. Though Jackson, in good Jeffersonian style, continued to insist that the bank was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court adhered to Hamilton's "implied powers" interpretation.
More important, Jackson-—taking inspiration from Jefferson-—attacked the commercial and banking aristocracy. Fighting aristocracy in one form or another consumed much of his presidency. Historians debate, to be sure, whether Jackson really fought aristocracy or just fought a small elite centered in New York and Philadelphia. Some very fine scholars, however,--namely Sean Wilentz and Charles Sellers--argue that Jackson really did fight the forces of entrenched wealth. I agree. Of course Jackson also supported slavery and Indian removal, but that is another matter.
Jackson leading his troops against the tyrannical banks!
My point is: Let's be clear with the American people. Liberals are the true heirs to the founding tradition. Liberals take the best from Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson. Like Hamilton, they understand how important it is for government to regulate credit and to subsidize infrastructure (alternative energy, the internet, rapid transit). Like Jefferson and Jackson, they battle against the forces of self-serving aristocracy (big business).
Republicans, by contrast,—-Glenn Beck among them-—take inspiration from the founders’ worst legacies. From Hamilton they take a love for wealthy elites. From Jefferson they borrow small-government rhetoric, though—thanks to Cold War textbooks—they are ignorant of its anti-aristocratic intent.
If the founder’s vision hangs by a thread (to paraphrase Beck's spiritual guide, Joseph Smith), that thread is what's left of liberalism. Neither the Tea Party nor "moderate" Republicans are the bulwark of the founding tradition. WE ARE.
And if the Constitution falls, it will be the Tea Party—-with its Paliny, Angley, Perryish talk of secession and rebellion—-that severs it.
Liberals: take back the founders. Please. They're important. Many were slaveholders. Many were Indian haters. But there is another legacy that liberals do well to recall: the founders' fight against aristocracy and their fight on behalf of activist government.
When some fool shows up at a ball game with a t-shirt that says "Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton: Right-wing extremists," tell them they do not know what they are talking about. Leaving Hamilton aside, tell them that Jefferson and Madison were ARDENTLY against the aristocracy of entrenched wealth. Then tell them that Hamilton ardently supported federal subsidies to promote development. He was not a free marketeer; he was a government subsidy guy.
Tell them, too, that Jefferson got Virginia to abolish primogeniture and entail, laws that held large estates intact to be passed down to eldest male heirs. He was very proud of that accomplishment. Land, he believed, should be divided among heirs, else aristocracy ensued. He fought banks for the same reason: he hated aristocracy. He hated tyranny. He hated what he saw in Britain, where wealthy bankers and industrialists controlled the Parliament, which they used to launch war after war in the eighteenth century.
Remind them that Madison said that the greatest threat to a republic is "perpetual warfare," which created great fortunes for a few, poverty for the many, and gave the government inordinate powers to clamp down on free speech.
Tell them that Benjamin Franklin denied that property itself was a natural right. Reasoning that too much property in the hands of too few created tyranny, Franklin sought--unsuccessfully, but sincerely--to get Pennsylvania to enact a constitution with the power to redistribute wealth.
Hell, wear a T-shirt saying "Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton: Left-wing extremists."
Tell the Tea Partiers: Your understanding of the founders comes from 1950s junior high. They'll hate that accusation, but it's absolutely true. They have a junior high understanding of the founders. A schoolboy understanding. And it matters!
The founders matter because, for better or worse, they are the founders. They did give us a legacy. Take the founders back from the arrogant literalists out there--the ones who don't understand the founders dedication to activist government (Hamilton) or to fighting aristocracy (Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Jackson).