Alexander Hamilton, Militarist
Reader William Hogeland, author of a recent popular history of the Whiskey Rebellion, wrote to alert me of his two-fisted piece on Alexander Hamilton in the Nov./Dec. Boston Review. Hogeland provides a careful account of the Hamilton revival over the past few years, including the shocking news that the Brookings Institution — the liberal think-thank that the Nixon White House wanted to bomb — now has a Hamilton Project dedicated to promoting policies that “will create new opportunities for middle class affluence, bolster economic security, and spur more enduring growth.”
This sounds more like the Hamilton of the op-ed writers than the historical figure who intentionally created a windfall for speculators in government securities and invented the American version of trickle-down economics, but never mind. A look at the Hamilton Project’s web site, with Jack Kemp sitting in on a panel and much emphasis on getting the poor to work harder, makes it seem more authentically Hamiltonian. (Brookings has been drifting right for years anyway, to the point of harboring some of the Iraq War’s key non-GOP ideologists.)
Returning to the Boston Review article, Hogeland follows his account of Hamilton’s modern reputation with a take-down that goes well beyond even what the modern Hamilton cult’s leading critic, Mike Wallace, has argued:
Neo-Hamiltonians of every kind are blotting out a defining feature of his thought, one that Hamilton himself insisted on throughout his turbulent career: the essential relationship between the concentration of national wealth and the obstruction of democracy through military force.
I am not sure I agree with everything argued in the rest of the article, but go Bill! Objectors can post comments on the Boston Review‘s site, or here.
