11 Comments:

• Interesting selections. None of them surprise me, from what I know about you - which is only from this blog. Nonetheless, it fits you to a "T".

  By  Penguin, at 9:11 AM  

• Is that a compliment. If so, thanks.

  By  Arbitrista, at 9:42 AM  

• LOVE LOVE LOVE 1,2,3!!!!!

  By  Weezy, at 10:30 AM  

• Love the Patton quote!!!!

  By  Seeking Solace, at 10:52 AM  

• LOL Yes, Publius, it is a compliment.

  By  Penguin, at 8:25 PM  

• He's not very quotable.

  By  Arbitrista, at 2:35 PM  

• BAHAHA on the AH. A fellow prof in my dept keeps putting his pic up on a sign that says "father of our country"

  By  Weezy, at 1:12 AM  

• #2 is awesome, and I couldn't agree more.

  By  luckybuzz, at 11:11 PM  

• Weezy:
  
  Actually I agree with your colleague. After the big 3 of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, I think Hamilton had the most influence on the country. Which is why I've always been a little outraged that the slaveholding, hypocritical, agrarian, elitist Jefferson gets all the press.
  
  I wrote about this when I first started blogging:
  
  http://third-estate.blogspot.com/2004/06/why-hamilton-deserves-monument.html
  http://third-estate.blogspot.com/2004/06/why-jefferson-doesnt.html

  By  Arbitrista, at 7:20 AM  

• Your promotion of Hamilton and denigration of Jefferson are very interesting. Especially these lines regarding Jefferson: "Now it is certainly true that small proprietors are essential for a stable popular government, but why farmers? Why not shopkeepers? The problems run deeper than that, however. Jefferson believed that industrialization would lead to the end of civic virtue and the rise of dictatorship." The problem with your argument is that Jefferson is correct: industrialization does lead to the end of civic virtue and the rise of dictatorship. Simply read Barrington Moore to see how this was true of the modern fascist states, such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Shopkeepers form the basis of a middle class, but they are driven by the profit motive to ever larger economies of scale - corporations. The corporations become private dictatorships because of the requirements of routinization of work and bureaucratization of management. Their economies of scale promote efficiencies that produce the wide disparities between rich and poor, and ultimately the rich control the government. In any industrialized society, human freedom is either crushed by the resulting authoritarian regime (example: the Soviet Union) or by the corporation itself. Realizing this, Jefferson prized the farmer, or more specifically the small farmer, the yeoman, because the large farmer behaves exactly like a corporation. With Hamilton's vision, instead of Jefferson, you get an inevitable diminution of human freedom, either by corporations or by the governments they support. Modern liberalism is a quest to liberate humans from corporate oppression through a virtuous federal government, while modern conservatism is a quest to liberate corporations from the oppression of an evil federal government. No matter who is in charge, there is going to be a fundamental battle over the size and scope of corporations. Modern liberals want to return to the agrarian society that Jefferson advocated. Tocqueville's description of civic virtue occurs in a pre-industrial America. Jefferson was right about the ails of society, and unfortunately Hamilton's success is the root of our modern political pathologies.

  By  Marriah, at 8:51 PM  

• Uh, how much human freedom is there in a subsistence economy dominated by slaveholding plantation owners, militarily weak, and dependent on foreign manufactures? Why do you think everybody in 18th century Virginia left for the West? If Jefferson's model was so great, then Virginia (which followed it) would be the most prosperous and liberal state in the union. New York, which followed Hamilton, would be a monarchy. In fact the reverse is the case.
  
  Industrialization can lead to the liberation of the human soul by creating the cosmopolitan atmosphere necessary for liberalism, and by creating meaningful economic opportunities.
  
  Of course I think independent proprietorships are crucial. But there is no necessary relationship between industrialization and slave labor. Good anti-trust protections and labor unions can make sure that the pie is distributed - you don't need to doom yourself to 3rd world status in some misguided quest for the romantic (and mythical) agrarian garden of eden.
  
  So I'm sorry. From what I can tell, modern conservatism has far more in common with Jefferson than Hamilton.

  By  Arbitrista, at 6:58 AM  

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