Monday, July 14, 2008

Hamiltonian Hagiography (Tom DiLorenzo)

Tom DiLorenzo gives some much needed revisionism on the conniving Alexander Hamilton:

Most Americans have been taught what William Lind calls a comic book version of their own country’s history. One aspect of American comic book history, invented in the post-1865 era, is that from the time of the founding the citizens of the Northern states were generally more civilized, educated, and above all else, moral, than their hillbilly, slave-owning, gun-toting, tobacco-growing, fellow countrymen from the Southern states.

A second element of American comic book history is that the "nation" and its economy were supposedly created by a few Great Men. Lincoln, for example, is said to be a "redeemer president" who single-handedly gave us "a new birth of freedom." "Everything that is good in America today we owe to Lincoln," the Lincoln idolater Harold Holzer once told a television interviewer.

Similarly, Alexander Hamilton is frequently portrayed as a saintly, god-like, and super-human figure by America’s court historians because of his fierce and highly effective advocacy of heavy taxation, public debt, central banking, protectionism, mercantilism, hyper-regulation, centralization of governmental power, and Big Government in general.

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