A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, “was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government”?
[Dick] Armey was flummoxed by this new information. “Widely regarded by whom?” he challenged, suspiciously. “Today’s modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton.”
You can read about Hamilton’s case-in-fact support for strong centralized government here, but what really amuses is the extent to which much of today’s far-right conservatism has embraced an embarrassingly blinkered view of the history of the Republic and its founders (Jamestown=socialist nightmare!).
—Jason
Leave a Reply