Well put. History is not a weapon for today’s arguments. Both 1619 Project and modern protectionist reinterpretations take fragments of truth and twist them into stories. The only intention being to justify an agenda.
Any rational person should be able to say the Founders were human, flawed, ambitious, brilliant, and contradictory. I think that is precisely what makes them so American.
Their contradictions, between ideals and actions, vision versus compromise, are cracks in the marble that give their stories so much resonance.
I think that’s how we should approach them. When we look at our Founders from that lens (as opposed to for some political purpose) their humanity emerges. I think it's in that humanity that makes their example matter. They are worthy of study. Not because they were perfect, but because they strove for something larger than themselves, despite their flaws. They are worthy of both criticism and admiration.Their lives, choices, and contradictions let us wrestle with history honestly. And in doing so maybe we can see ourselves reflected in their struggles. And to recognize that our own actions, like theirs, shape the ongoing story of this nation towards a more perfect union.
Yeah, agreed. I noted here that Henry Clay's American System was never implemented and the Hamiltonian style system was undone in the 1830s during the Bank War. From the 1830s until well after WW2 the United States pursued a policy of deliberate economic, governmental, scientific, fiscal redundancy and operated with substantial legal/regulatory and policy variability, and had decentralized banking/finance/monetary system with very pluralized capital formations. And the Federal government was the smallest of the three levels of government in regards to overall revenue intake and spending. Thats the opposite of Hamilton and Clays' intentions.
Important post, thanks for writing it. I went several steps farther to argue that there's a strong historical record to support Jefferson as antislavery in a recent post (see here, https://vsidney.substack.com/p/a-foundational-principle-understanding). Jefferson was not an abolitionist, of course, but certainly meant what he wrote that "all men are created equal."
Leading Jefferson scholars such as Prof. Peter Onuf and Prof. Cara Rogers Stevens agree. Stevens' recent book "Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery" is excellent.
Henry Clay's American System was never implemented and the Hamiltonian style system was undone in the 1830s during the Bank War. From the 1830s until well after WW2 the United States pursued a policy of deliberate economic, governmental, scientific, fiscal redundancy and operated with substantial legal/regulatory and policy variability, and had decentralized banking/finance/monetary system with very pluralized capital formations. And the Federal government was the smallest of the three levels of government in regards to overall revenue intake and spending. Thats the opposite of Hamilton and Clays' intentions.
Well put. History is not a weapon for today’s arguments. Both 1619 Project and modern protectionist reinterpretations take fragments of truth and twist them into stories. The only intention being to justify an agenda.
Any rational person should be able to say the Founders were human, flawed, ambitious, brilliant, and contradictory. I think that is precisely what makes them so American.
Their contradictions, between ideals and actions, vision versus compromise, are cracks in the marble that give their stories so much resonance.
I think that’s how we should approach them. When we look at our Founders from that lens (as opposed to for some political purpose) their humanity emerges. I think it's in that humanity that makes their example matter. They are worthy of study. Not because they were perfect, but because they strove for something larger than themselves, despite their flaws. They are worthy of both criticism and admiration.Their lives, choices, and contradictions let us wrestle with history honestly. And in doing so maybe we can see ourselves reflected in their struggles. And to recognize that our own actions, like theirs, shape the ongoing story of this nation towards a more perfect union.
Yeah, agreed. I noted here that Henry Clay's American System was never implemented and the Hamiltonian style system was undone in the 1830s during the Bank War. From the 1830s until well after WW2 the United States pursued a policy of deliberate economic, governmental, scientific, fiscal redundancy and operated with substantial legal/regulatory and policy variability, and had decentralized banking/finance/monetary system with very pluralized capital formations. And the Federal government was the smallest of the three levels of government in regards to overall revenue intake and spending. Thats the opposite of Hamilton and Clays' intentions.
Important post, thanks for writing it. I went several steps farther to argue that there's a strong historical record to support Jefferson as antislavery in a recent post (see here, https://vsidney.substack.com/p/a-foundational-principle-understanding). Jefferson was not an abolitionist, of course, but certainly meant what he wrote that "all men are created equal."
Leading Jefferson scholars such as Prof. Peter Onuf and Prof. Cara Rogers Stevens agree. Stevens' recent book "Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery" is excellent.
Henry Clay's American System was never implemented and the Hamiltonian style system was undone in the 1830s during the Bank War. From the 1830s until well after WW2 the United States pursued a policy of deliberate economic, governmental, scientific, fiscal redundancy and operated with substantial legal/regulatory and policy variability, and had decentralized banking/finance/monetary system with very pluralized capital formations. And the Federal government was the smallest of the three levels of government in regards to overall revenue intake and spending. Thats the opposite of Hamilton and Clays' intentions.