My tirade against identity politics and the hijacking of Hamilton...

[texas_ex2000]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/11/14/was-election-vote-against-hamilton/HAT5A4m3msG6m8pPORbknL/story.html?s_campaign=bostonglobe:socialflow:twitter

“Yo. Ev’ry action has an equal, opposite reaction.”

The box office-busting musical “Hamilton’’ could not have been more timely. Apart from anything else, it has reminded Americans that the politics of their republic has always been a blood sport. At least this year we didn’t have an actual duel of the sort that killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical is doubly significant in that it makes such a striking claim — namely that the heritage of the Founding Fathers now belongs to the country’s growing nonwhite population. That is the significance of his casting of African-Americans in the lead roles; of his use of hip-hop for most of the libretto; of Hamilton’s parting lines:

America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me.
You let me make a difference.
A place where even orphan immigrants can leave their fingerprints and rise up.

Yep, ev’ry action has an equal, opposite reaction. At 2:32 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2016, Donald Trump was declared by AP to be the 45th president-elect of the United States. To quote Hamilton again:

There are moments that the words don’t reach.
There is suffering too terrible to name.
You hold your child as tight as you can
and push away the unimaginable.

I am a huge Hamilton (the Man) fan. That last paragraph is a rap from an overrated musical. The actual Secretary Hamilton wrote the following in The Federalist No. 21.

The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.

Yep...this is what he believed.

Hamilton was a courages and gallant Army officer (veterans voted 2-1 for Trump) who led a charge against heavily fortified British redoubts at the Battle of Yorktown. He led a a company of Kings College/Columbia University (Obama's alma mater) men under fire from HMS Asia patrolling Hudson Bay to secure cannons at the Battery in South Manhattan. Patriotism was this man's middle name.

Hamilton was a man that believed in a dynamic modern US economy and the importance of commerce, business, and infrastructure. Industrialism in the late 18th Century was also a mechanism for economic mobility for the masses. On the other hand Jeffersonian Democrats believed in an agrarian utopia managed by gentleman "farmers" - in other words, the elite and powerful Southern slaveholding aristocracy.

He also was not without scandal. He had an affair with a leggy blonde, and was blackmailed by her husband for hush money in order to preserve his honor. When the husband, Reynolds, was arrested for a scheme of illegally buying unpaid wages and pensions of War veterans, he threatened to implicate Hamilton if he didn't intervene. Well Hamilton had none of that. When Reynolds let the cat out of the bag and falsely accused the Treasury Secretary of financial impropriety, he, get this, gave all his letters to the investigators including James Monroe and then wrote an entire pamphlet discussing in exquisite detail every aspect of the affair. People we're freaking stunned to say the least because the lascivious details disclosed in the public pamphlet were not something they were used to reading in the 1790s. Writing that pamphlet destroyed his honor, but the transparency of the evidence and details were so overwhelming and legitimate that it completely exonerated Hamilton of any professional impropriety and restored the people's confidence in their government and leaders. Hamilton made the personally difficult but ultimately the right and high-character choice

Much of Hamilton's popularity today is based off his background. He was born out of wedlock to a low level Scottish gentleman and a mixed race mother in the British West Indies. Identity SJWs eat that $#!^ up. Look folks! Hamilton was an immigrant!!! He probably had a darker complexion!!!

Hamilton was a passionate abolitionist, as opposed to Jefferson, and was extremely philantrophic to and an advocate for Native Americans. But, he would vomit at the thought of his life told as a pop blockbuster identity politics musical. Above all, Alexander Hamilton believed in the principle of meritocracy and rejected the concept of worth and entitlement through identity or provenance. The most courageous, most cultivated (educated), smartest, and most industrious men are the ones rewarded, not by the government or markets of men, but by God.

I will say that Ferguson in this article comes around at the end, but the mere attempt of liberals tying Secretary Hamilton to anything in their agenda is revolting.

Some of my other favorite Hamilton quotes (real quotes...not from a Broadway musical):

• It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
  • Speech in New York, urging ratification of the U.S. Constitution (21 June 1788)

• If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
  • Essay in the American Daily Advertiser (28 August 1794)

• The fabric of American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of National power ought to flow immediately from that pure original fountain of all legitimate authority.
  • No. 22

 

[Htown77]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/opinion/what-hamilton-forgets-about-alexander-hamilton.html?_r=0

Hamilton is my least favorite founding father and the worst of the "great" ones in my opinion.

Hamilton's plan for the Constitution would have nearly abolished states and just had one strong central government. Hamilton, personally, would have liked to have abolished the states all together.

Hamilton was one of the federalists (if not the leading federalist) behind the Alien and Sedition Acts. The federalists put a congressman in jail over free speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lyon
I read many of the federalist alien and sedition cases in law school. If it were up to Hamilton, we would not have free speech or the ability to criticize the government. The Lyon case always made me sick because it was typical witch hunt behavior. Lyon may have been many things, but he did serve gallantly in the american revolution. The Federalists made up lies calling Lyon's service into question as part of their campaign to tear Lyon down while locking him up for openly opposing the federalists. Lyon not only won reelection from jail, but his war record was later vindicated.

Hamilton's preferred title for the president of the United State was "your highness."

Hamilton may have started with nothing, but he was an elitist of the worst kind. Hamilton was all about a strong central government of elites and did not even believe congressmen, much less the people, had the right to publicly disagree with such a government. #TeamJefferson

 

[texas_ex2000]

Hamilton is my least favorite founding father and the worst of the "great" ones in my opinion.

Hamilton's plan for the Constitution would have nearly abolished states and just had one strong central government. Hamilton, personally, would have liked to have abolished the states all together.

Hamilton was one of the federalists (if not the leading federalist) behind the Alien and Sedition Acts. The federalists put a congressman in jail over free speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lyon
I read many of the federalist alien and sedition cases in law school. If it were up to Hamilton, we would not have free speech or the ability to criticize the government.

Hamilton may have started with nothing, but he ended up an elitist of the worst kind. #TeamJefferson

The alternative was a loose confederation of bankrupt weak states with no prospect of overseas investment or growth. Slavery was also seriously debated at that time with states' sovereignty as the cover. And Hamilton, extremely astute, saw through this. And speaking of free speech, Jefferson didn't believe in the application of the 1st Amendment to slaves.

HTown, ultimately the modern powerful diverse economic superpower United States we have today is Hamiltonian. It's not Jeffersonian. Even Jefferson's big accomplishments as President are Hamiltonian. 1) Louisiana Purchase, 2) The Barbary Wars, 3) Lewis and Clark Expedition, etc.

I read many of the federalist alien and sedition cases in law school. If it were up to Hamilton, we would not have free speech or the ability to criticize the government.

Thankfully, he was a key architect in the Constitution which prevented it to being "up to" one man. Parts of that act are still on the books 200 years later and may play into homeland security policy.

And the point of the OP was about much more than his Constitutional philosophy.

 

[Htown77]

A lot of Hamilton's ideas were right for 1900 onward but wrong for 1800. I like Great Britain. My grandmother was born in London. However, Great Britain was still trying to screw with the United States at least through the civil war when they sided with the CSA. France was our natural ally at the time. Like Woodrow Wilson and the UN, in some cases, Hamilton was too forward thinking.

I believe in a national bank and the fed. However, Hamilton's version at the time enriched the elites at the expense of everyone else. It was not until my third con law class at UT Law that I learned there actually was some screwiness with the national bank and Jackson's ideas, though wrong in the long run, about the rich using the bank to screw everyone had more merit at the time then I had ever been led to believe (though a better solution would have just been fixing the bank, not abolishing it).

I absolutely do not agree with Hamilton wanting to do away with the states completely or his strong anti-first amendment views.

Jefferson certainly has a lot of faults (and big faults at that) as well. Of the two, as leaders in the early 1800s, I like Jefferson better.

A weak confederation was fine for the 1800s. As Otto von Bismarck said "The Americans are truly a lucky people. They are bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors and to the east and west by fish.God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." We could get away with it then, so why not less government? That weaker Jeffersonian/Jacksonian government built up the bill of rights and led to the expansion of voting rights that we have today.

 

[texas_ex2000]

A weak confederation was fine for the 1800s. As Otto von Bismarck said "The Americans are truly a lucky people. They are bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors and to the east and west by fish.God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." We could get away with it then, so why not less government? That weaker Jeffersonian/Jacksonian government built up the bill of rights and led to the expansion of voting rights that we have today.

I just nerd out over dorky debates like this, haha. I would say that if the Federal Government did not assume the states' debt, that prospect of expansion of anything, much less voting rights, would have been severely hazarded.

I also think, despite great odds, this country actually made it to the 21st Century; and through economic and industrial power were victorious in the greatest war in human history and put a man on the Moon. With due respect to Bismarck, The Great American Experiment had so much going against it when the Constitution was ratified, it's a miracle we made it. We almost didn't in the 1860s, and thankfully Hamiltonian principles overcame. So...I'll value the real success against huge odds of what actually happened vs a hypothetical Jeffersonian what if.

He was an elitist...you got me there. Haha. But at least he earned his snobbishness through merit and military service, unlike other elitists born into it and drinking wine in Paris during the War.

And BTW, I think Jackson is incredibly underrated (at least by people who don't read history). I like him for completely different reasons.

 

[Htown77]

I just nerd out over dorky debates like this, haha.

I have been looking to debate Hamilton since the play came out and was like "finally, a chance!"

I definitely agree that Bismarck severely underrates the Constitution and the American people, but I always got a kick out of those quotes.

Truth is our founding fathers were amazing geniuses who somehow all happened to be in the same backwater colonies (and not spread out over the americas) and together combined their ideas, good and bad, to create what we have today. Should also give credit to the lesser known leaders of the time, federalist and anti-federalist alike, that mostly (we had a civil war, so definitely not entirely) did a good job picking the better ideas of the federalists and anti-federalists, the hamiltonians and jeffersonians, and dropping the bad ones.

 

[Clean]

I doubt the average Trump voter gave a single thought specifically to a rap musical on Broadway. I know one person who has actually seen it. He thought the "the most celebrated American cultural phenomenon of our time" was pretty meh. He was bored.

They were perhaps, in the back of their minds, reacting to the rewriting of American History by the Left, of which Hamilton is a symptom. I think they're tired of their children being taught History from textbooks written by the likes of Howard Zinn, an anti-American Marxist, which emphasize contributions to American history by Muslims, gays, women, non- whites, anybody but the traditional American historical figures, who are mostly in the hated white, heterosexual male category.

 

[Joe Fan]

Is it time for national conversation about just shutting up about Hamilton?

 

[Joe Fan]

also dropping in this repeat here just for the heck of it

Hamilton was also a champion the Electoral College.
But this did not make the musical.
Holla

 

[texas_ex2000]

also dropping in this repeat here just for the heck of it

Hamilton was the anithesis of what the young Bernie supporters want. The guy was pro banks...he effecticely was the father of the American banking system if not Wall Street. Instead of writing a pamphlet on King George or whatever the equivalent of Facebook slacktivism was in the 18th Century, the dude raised his own company of men from Kings College to raid the Battery for cannon. And he didn't whine for a free college. He was so incredibly brilliant and hard working as a boy (raised by a single mom btw) toiling as a clerk in a shipping office, his neighbors on Nevis raised enough money for a scholarship to send him to Kings College.

 

[texas_ex2000]

Hamilton was also a champion the Electoral College.
But this did not make the musical.
Holla

You can always ask the SJW folks, especially the musical theater fans, who are calling for a repeal of the Electoral College if they're smarter than...cough...

Alexander F'n Hamilton

BOOM!

another worldview shattered.