A few examples of Hamilton's thoughts...followed by their relation to current day problems:
...there is hardly at this time a man of information in America who will not acknowledge, as a general proposition, that in its present form it is unequal either to a vigorous prosecution of the war or to the preservation of the Union in peace; yet when the principle comes to be applied to practice, there seems not to be the same agreement in the modes of remedying the defect; and it is to be feared, from a disposition which appeared in some of the States on a late occasion, that the salutary intentions of Congress may meet with more delay and opposition than the critical posture of the States will justify.
I would not apply this, necessarily, to our ability to conduct warfare - the President's Commander-in-Chief powers seem more than enough for the task. But specifically in regards to health care legislation, the Congress seems unable to move forward on any front. While everyone seems to agree that this is so, no one seems to agree on how to move forward...or even which direction in which to move.
History is full of examples where, in contests for liberty, a jealousy of power has either defeated the attempts to recover or preserve it, in the first instance, or has afterward subverted it by clogging government with too great precautions for its felicity, or by leaving too wide a door for sedition and popular licentiousness. In a government framed for durable liberty, not less regard must be paid to giving the magistrate a proper degree of authority to make and execute the laws with rigor, than to guard against encroachments upon the rights of the community. As too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy, and both, eventually, to the ruin of the people.
I think it is clear that the claims of "saving America from Socialism" are vacuous. But so, too, are the calls for greater bipartisan spirit and compromise. The Republicans in Washington are arrayed as a single voting bloc against anything proposed by the Democrats, and their hopes for any future lie, not in crafting the best legislation, but in refusing any legislation, no matter how well-crafted, so that Democrats can be made out to have failed to govern.
In such an atmosphere, there can be no compromise. There is only a moving line of capitulation. There is no opportunity for bipartisanship and any show of seeking common ground is simply a ruse for the politically ignorant and the talk show circuit. The result, as Hamilton predicted, is anarchy. The problem with health care, after all, is not that the government is subverting private enterprise, but that private enterprise is failing to provide health care to all persons, making of it a de facto luxury good.
In comparison of our governments with those of the ancient republics, we must, without hesitation, give the preference to our own; because every power with us is exercised by representation, not in tumultuary assemblies of the collective body of the people, where the art or impudence of the Orator or Tribune, rather than the utility or justice of the measure, could seldom fail to govern. Yet, whatever may be the advantage on our side in such a comparison, men who estimate the value of institutions, not from prejudices of the moment, but from experience and reason, must be persuaded that the same jealousy of power has prevented our reaping all the advantages from the examples of other nations which we ought to have done, and has rendered our constitutions in many respects feeble and imperfect.
To put it simply, Hamilton is saying that our democratic republic is superior to Greek and Roman models because our leaders are not so easily swayed by the power of rhetoric. They dispassionately weigh the justice of the measures before them.
If there was ever a time when that was true, it has long since lapsed. We live in an era ruled by sound bite. It is the equivalent of ruling by Twitter...where the idea is to craft a single phrase that resonates rather than a body of legislation that seeks "a more perfect union."
The outcome is that we are deprived of the fruits of our liberty. The tree of liberty, watered through our history with the blood of our patriots, is now pruned by corporate media and self-serving partisanship to the point where it cannot even provide shade, much less the fruit of opportunity, equality, brotherhood, statemanship, or justice. The pursuit of political power without the illumination of public interest and common prosperity is simply the path of despotism, no matter how large or small a group would lead us along it.
As I read Hamilton's words, weighing the truth of them from nearly two hundred and thirty years of unfolding history, I can't help but agree. We need a New Continentalist spirit. |
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