By Ben Domenech
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Alexander Hamilton was a bastard. Indeed, John Adams and
Thomas Jefferson never tired of calling him that – the ‘Bastard Brat of a Scots
Pedlar’ who infuriated them time and again. They called him this for one reason
above all: that when it came to forming the American nation, Alexander Hamilton
ate their lunch. In the debate over the course America ought to take, it is
Hamilton’s vision of the American economic structure, the American system of
government, and the American system of federalism that prevailed over the
visions of others. It was a vision that largely endured for a century and a
half, and in that time saw a collection of colonies and a sleepy agrarian
economy transformed into the greatest nation the world ever knew. The
inventions of an aggressively active mind who did not live to see them turned
out to sustain the freedoms of a people Hamilton loved with the love of an
adopted son.
Had Alexander Hamilton died taking Redoubt Ten at
Yorktown, bayonets fixed and muskets unloaded, he would have died a more
significant American than his fellow Columbia student Barack Obama, who has now
deigned to displace him from the ten dollar bill. To charge across that field
under the flash of British artillery, rush into a hail of British musket fire,
leap first over the parapet yelling for his fellow Patriots to follow and fight
and by so doing win their freedom would have been enough for the man who had no
father but became ours. He did not need to write and curate The Federalist; he
did not need to construct the Constitution; he did not need to establish the
U.S. Mint; he did not need to save the nation from financial calamity; he did
not need to, in the aftermath of the 1800 election and in his dying act,
destroy the political fortunes of the conniving traitor and would-be tyrant
Aaron Burr.
Hamilton recognized Burr as a man without principle, bent
on power for powers sake, who hated the Founding Fathers even as he envied
their influence. He would recognize our current leadership today for its
similarities. This administration has made Hamilton a casualty of the era of
daily venal vituperation of people who do not care about history. We live in an
era of triumphant minor social justice warrior Twitter mobs which insist upon a
foothold in American currency and a casting aside of our history in favor of
the priorities of modern identity politics, and under the leadership of an
elite which does not care that they are wrong — and in fact is so bold as to
use that to their advantage. And thus, our orphan immigrant Founding Father who
fought to abolish the slave trade at the Constitutional Convention is deemed
insufficient as a fulfillment of our progressive self-actualization process.
It seems so fitting in catering to our modern ignorance:
Obama’s choice of which American to remove from money is the man who invented
American money. “America’s currency makes a statement about who we are and what
we stand for as a nation,” said Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. And what this
statement indicates is that Jack Lew is a historical ignoramus if he believes
that Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks or Wilma Mankiller deserves
to be on American currency more than Alexander Hamilton. Does not Caitlyn
Jenner deserve it more than all of them combined? Indeed, by this standard, do
not all the dead white men deserve to be replaced? Mollie Hemingway has a few
suggestions on this point.
Back in 2009, during the height of the Tea Party, there
were crotchety old Americans who warned in dark tones about the dangers of this
president. He was a socialist, they said, and feckless to boot. He hated the
American Founding and the men who built the foundations of this country. He
would lead us into war and ruin and despair, and he would tear down the
monuments to our heroes along the way. He was anti-American through and
through, in ways that us youngsters did not understand. When they said this, I would
disagree as politely as possible. The president is wrong about policy, wrong
about direction, I said at the time, but he is not a socialist, not someone who
hates America. He may have the wrong ideas, but his heart was still in the
right place, or close to it.
Is it possible they were right, and I was wrong?
Alexander Hamilton loved America. He labored for her,
fought for her, wrote her laws, built her structures, and died a patriot. He
arrived here as a penniless immigrant with nothing but his dedication, his
mind, and the strength of his beliefs going for him, and he became one of the
most significant Americans to ever live. Love his ideas or hate them, they made
our nation what she is: they established our federalist system of government,
secured our liberty, and transformed us into an economic power that was and is
the envy of the world.
Alexander Hamilton was a bastard, but he was a righteous
bastard. He loved his country. And the callow men who are demoting him on our
currency today are not fit to lick his boots.
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