Tag Archives: Alexander Hamilton

In God We Trust by Eduardo Galeano

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Presidents of the United States tend to speak in God’s name, although none of them has let on if He communicates by letter, fax, telephone or telepathy. With or without His approval, in 2006 God was proclaimed chairman of the Republican Party of Texas.

That said, the All Powerful, who is even on the dollar bill, was a shining absence at the time of independence. The constitution did not mention Him. At the Constitutional Convention, when a prayer was suggested, Alexander Hamilton responded:

“We don’t need foreign aid.”

On his deathbed, George Washington wanted no prayers or priest or anything.

Benjamin Franklin said divine revelation was nothing but poppycock.

“My mind is my own church,” affirmed Thomas Paine, and President John Adams believed that “this world would be the best of all worlds, if there were no religion in it.”

According to Thomas Jefferson, Catholic priests and Protestant ministers were “soothsayers and necromancers” who divided humanity, making “one half fools and the other half hypocrites.”

-Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) RIP

Government surveillance

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Last night I was, as I’m sure many of you were, privileged to watch an ABC docudrama about 9/11. We were invited by the ACLU to ponder how we should we respond to such an attack on our precious soil. Let’s look in a mirror..let us be reminded of who we are as a nation. Yes, let’s! Who are we as a nation? Are we all in agreement here? Were Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson on the same page ‘lo those many years ago? Most definitely not!

Jefferson, radical that he was, believed in personal autonomy. He advocated a decentralized government with the majority of power and authority residing with the states and, ultimately, with the individual. Jefferson was fearful of tyranny and was a proponent of personal freedom. Hamilton, on the other hand, favored a strong central government…one that acted in accordance with the interests of the “people” and needed the full faith and support of the American public to thrive. He said that a vast body of powers were to be implied and authorized Congress to “make all laws that shall be necessary and proper” to carry out powers specifically granted…like “national security.”
 
Can you guess who prevailed? It’s obvious that we live in a Hamiltonian society, rife with rhetoric and hyperbole, where the government “protects” us and is willing and able to trample individual freedoms on a daily basis. Why? Because they can! Because we let them! We’ve asked them to!   Jefferson and Hamilton duel

The frat boys in Washington are drawing upon Hamiltonian principles in the wake of the attacks of 9/11…they watch us, they engage in racial and political profiling…they imprison American citizens without due process…they make new laws every day that restrict our civil liberties. Why? Because they are fighting the “war on terror” and what they are doing is, of course, both necessary and proper.

Well, thank you very little. Don’t forget that every new law designed to “protect” us, every new rule enacted by our chums in D.C., comes with a price…our personal freedom. Are we safer now? I don’t feel it at all.