Constitution Day is the anniversary of the signing of the United States’ Constitution, which was signed on Sept. 17, 1787.
Mercyhurst College hosts an annual Constitution Day lecture in honor of this occasion. On Thursday, Sept. 17, Dr. Michael Federici of the political science department presented his views on the constitutional theory of one of America’s ‘founding fathers,’ Alexander Hamilton.
In his lecture, Federici discussed the constitutional and political theory of Hamilton as it related to the creation of a National Bank and Hamilton’s ideological opposition of Thomas Jefferson.
After giving a brief history of Hamilton’s life, Federici spoke about Hamilton’s constitutional theory.
Hamilton was a loose constructionist, a Federalist, opposed citizen rebellion and was against the Bill of Rights, Federici said. Loose constructionist is the name used for those who believe the Constitution contains not only those powers explicitly included in writing, but also implied powers.
According to Federici, many modern political scientists, especially those who admire Hamilton’s political and ideological nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, tend to view Hamilton as someone who advocated stretching the Constitution to cover any power desired by the national government with no oversight.
On the contrary, Hamilton was an advocate of limited implied powers, which are powers that must necessarily be tied in explicitly to the Constitution, Federici said. Hamilton viewed the creation of the National Bank as one such limited implied power.
On this and many other issues, Hamilton frequently clashed with Jefferson, who favored only allowing the national government those powers specifically stated in the Constitution.
Another issue on which the two disagreed was on the type of national government which ought to be adopted by the fledgling United States of America. Hamilton believed that the welfare of the nation depended on a strong national government, while Jefferson was a fervent proponent of states’ rights, without interference from the national government.
Similarly, Jefferson believed that “a little revolution now and then” was a good thing, while Hamilton considered citizen rebellion a threat to the nation, Federici said.
The difference in political ideologies between the two men continues to be discussed today.
Hamilton was in the process of writing a multi-volume work on political theory at the time of his death.
Its incompletion, according to Federici, makes Federici’s forthcoming book on Hamilton “both easier and harder” to write, he said.
Federici’s book will tentatively be released in 2011, by John Hopkins University Press.
“The lecture was really interesting,” freshman Phil Blair said. “I know more about one of our ‘founding fathers’ now.”
Over 75 people attended the lecture, the largest crowd ever to attend a Mercyhurst College Constitution Day lecture.
tkubic46 • Sep 24, 2009 at 1:59 am
Thomas Jefferson > Alexander Hamilton
tkubic46 • Sep 24, 2009 at 3:38 am
Court historians have long praised the glories of Alexander Hamilton as the greatest of the founding fathers. This view is back in vogue as U.S. economic policy becomes ever more statist.
In this dazzling work of revisionist history, Professor Thomas DiLorenzo provides the other view. He shows that Hamilton is the architect of most of today’s failed economic policies: protectionism, central banking, and debt. His core principle is that government should be used to benefit the rich and privileged, mostly through its power to print money and run financial scams. In this sense, Hamiliton’s Curse has been visited upon the United States in the2008 bailout of powerful investment banks.
Hamilton was the master of the political lie. He used his rhetorical powers and elite connections to invent the myth of the Constitution’s “implied powers.” He established the imperial presidency. He devised a national banking system that imposes boom-and-bust cycles on the American economy. He saddled Americans with a massive national debt and oppressive taxation. He pushed economic policies that lined the pockets of the wealthy and created a government system built on graft, spoils, and patronage. He transformed state governments from Jeffersonian bulwarks of liberty to beggars for federal crumbs.
Moreover, DiLorenzo shows that Hamilton, as compared with Jefferson, was an economic ignoramus. Whereas Jefferson was schooled in a classical liberal tradition and revered the legacy of A.R.J. Turgot, Hamilton was an old-fashioned mercantilist who thought that barriers and debt were the keys to prosperity.
By debunking the Hamiltonian myths perpetuated in recent admiring biographies, DiLorenzo exposes an uncomfortable truth: The American people are no longer the masters of their government but its servants. Only by restoring a system based on Jeffersonian ideals can Hamilton’s curse be lifted, at last.
Thank goodness that a master economic historian has finally answered all the hysterical pro-Hamilton propaganda that has been inflicted on us. This is a book that every believer in American liberty must master.
http://mises.org/store/Hamiltons-Curse-P534.aspx