Hamilton, Jefferson and Modern America

We don't want revolution, we don't require deeply radical solutions. Toward the end of his life Alexander Hamilton, the father of American nationalism, wrote: “The present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling...rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.”

Hamilton, according to Holmes Alexander, always thought that the American and French revolutions were not alike. The French committed regicide. Jefferson was the “French president” to Hamilton who he thought was a “befuddled theorist,” which perhaps was going too far, but there was no love between Hamilton and Jefferson. For 13 years during his rule Jefferson ignored Thanksgiving Day which angered Hamilton because he thought of Thanksgiving as the national destiny day.

Hamilton, who made personal mistakes in his active life, nevertheless thought honesty was the product of the business world, where contracts and banknotes were the promises men lived by. Was Hamilton naive? No, those were in fact the qualities of the Anglo Saxons in general who formed America, which looks naive now because America has changed, or rather Americans have changed.

Hamilton also wrote: “The science of policy is the knowledge of human nature.” In today's language this means political science should be based in knowledge of human nature, and for that the science of sociobiology is needed as the foundation of the humanities, which includes political science.

We can deal with our growing differences best through the separation of powers written in our Constitution, championed by Jefferson, giving most of the power to the states, but also by protecting the states internally and externally with light federalism, including the protection of economic nationalism, which was affirmed by Hamilton and by many future leaders during the time of the rise of America, before the fall brought about by anti-American global economics.