why The Movement makes me wildly uncomfortable
Will Wilkinson posts on why one ought to pick anyone but Thomas Jefferson in Radley Balko’s Founding Father poll, and the commenters let loose a flood of verbal diarrhea:
FatDrunkAndStupid
April 9th, 2008 06:27 11
I’d also take exception to the idea that Jefferson’s position on slavery was worse than Hamilton’s on the Central Bank. Slavery, though dreadful, was on its last legs. The centralization of power that the Bank represented was a new, dangerous, and rising threat. Centralization and the Leviathan state are scourge of modern liberty, and Hamilton was an ardent supporter of both.
Good God. If we’re going to excuse TJ–who not only has the slave-owning mark against him, but that of being an open supporter of the Jacobin bloodbath in France–because Cato uses his head in its logo, but demonize Alexander Hamilton for introducing centralized government that I contend actually improved the rule of law, then I’m out.