{"id":4765,"date":"2010-09-24T13:22:18","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T18:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=4765"},"modified":"2010-09-24T13:22:18","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T18:22:18","slug":"chernow-on-the-founding-fathers-versus-the-tea-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2010\/09\/24\/chernow-on-the-founding-fathers-versus-the-tea-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Chernow on ‘The Founding Fathers Versus the Tea Party’"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 24 September 2010 NY Times, historian Ron Chernow addresses The Founding Fathers Versus the Tea Party<\/a>. The Tea Party claims that its views mirror those of the Founding Fathers. Chernow claims that the Founders were certainly NOT “a like-minded group of theorists.”<\/p>\n

The truth is that the disputatious founders \u2014 who were revolutionaries, not choir boys \u2014 seldom agreed about anything. Never has the country produced a more brilliantly argumentative, individualistic or opinionated group of politicians. Far from being a soft-spoken epoch of genteel sages, the founding period was noisy and clamorous, rife with vitriolic polemics and partisan backbiting. Instead of bequeathing to posterity a set of universally shared opinions, engraved in marble, the founders shaped a series of fiercely fought debates that reverberate down to the present day. Right along with the rest of America, the Tea Party has inherited these open-ended feuds, which are profoundly embedded in our political culture.<\/p>\n

As a general rule, the founders favored limited government, reserving a special wariness for executive power, but they clashed sharply over those limits.<\/p>\n

The Constitution\u2019s framers dedicated Article I to the legislature in the hope that, as the branch nearest the people, it would prove pre-eminent. But Washington, as our first president, quickly despaired of a large, diffuse Congress ever exercising coherent leadership. The first time he visited the Senate to heed its \u201cadvice and consent,\u201d about a treaty with the Creek Indians, he was appalled by the disorder. \u201cThis defeats every purpose of my coming here,\u201d he grumbled, then departed with what one senator branded an air of \u201csullen dignity.\u201d Washington went back one more time before dispensing with the Senate\u2019s advice altogether, henceforth seeking only its consent.<\/p>\n

President Washington\u2019s Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, wasted no time in testing constitutional limits as he launched a burst of government activism. In December 1790, he issued a state paper calling for the first central bank in the country\u2019s history, the forerunner of the Federal Reserve System.<\/p>\n

Because the Constitution didn\u2019t include a syllable about such an institution, Hamilton, with his agile legal mind, pounced on Article I, Section 8, which endowed Congress with all powers \u201cnecessary and proper\u201d to perform tasks assigned to it in the national charter. Because the Constitution empowered the government to collect taxes and borrow money, Hamilton argued, a central bank might usefully discharge such functions. In this way, he devised a legal doctrine of powers \u201cimplied\u201d as well as enumerated in the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Aghast at the bank bill, James Madison, then a congressman from Virginia, pored over the Constitution and could not \u201cdiscover in it the power to incorporate a bank.\u201d Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was no less horrified by Hamilton\u2019s legal legerdemain. He thought that only measures indispensable to the discharge of enumerated powers should be allowed, not merely those that might prove convenient. He spied how many programs the assertive Hamilton was prepared to drive through the glaring loophole of the \u201cnecessary and proper\u201d clause. And he prophesied that for the federal government \u201cto take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn … is to take possession of a boundless field of power.\u201d<\/p>\n

After reviewing cogent legal arguments presented by Hamilton and Jefferson, President Washington came down squarely on Hamilton\u2019s side, approving the first central bank.<\/p>\n

John Marshall, the famed chief justice, traced the rise of the two-party system to that blistering episode, and American politics soon took on a nastily partisan tone. That the outstanding figures of the two main factions, Hamilton and Jefferson, both belonged to Washington\u2019s cabinet attests to the fundamental disagreements within the country. Hamilton and his Federalist Party espoused a strong federal government, led by a powerful executive branch, and endorsed a liberal reading of the Constitution; although he resisted the label at first, Washington clearly belonged to this camp.<\/p>\n

Jefferson and his Republicans (not related to today\u2019s Republicans) advocated states\u2019 rights, a weak federal government and strict construction of the Constitution. The Tea Party can claim legitimate descent from Jefferson and Madison, even though they founded what became the Democratic Party. On the other hand, Washington and Hamilton \u2014 founders of no mean stature \u2014 embraced an expansive view of the Constitution. That would scarcely sit well with Tea Party advocates, many of whom adhere to the judicial doctrine of originalism \u2014 i.e., that any interpretation of the Constitution must abide by the intent of those founders who crafted it.<\/p>\n

Of course, had it really been the case that those who wrote the charter could best fathom its true meaning, one would have expected considerable agreement about constitutional matters among those former delegates in Philadelphia who participated in the first federal government. But Hamilton and Madison, the principal co-authors of \u201cThe Federalist,\u201d sparred savagely over the Constitution\u2019s provisions for years. Much in the manner of Republicans and Democrats today, Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians battled over exorbitant government debt, customs duties and excise taxes, and the federal aid to business recommended by Hamilton.<\/p>\n

No single group should ever presume to claim special ownership of the founding fathers or the Constitution they wrought with such skill and ingenuity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

-RichardH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 24 September 2010 NY Times, historian Ron Chernow addresses The Founding Fathers Versus the Tea Party. The Tea Party claims that its views mirror those of the Founding Fathers. Chernow claims that the Founders were certainly NOT “a like-minded group of theorists.” The truth is that the disputatious founders \u2014 who were revolutionaries, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-richardhsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4769,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765\/revisions\/4769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}