Trump the Hamiltonian: 8 Words that Tell You Donald Trump Is Serious About American Jobs and Manufacturing

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by JAMES P. PINKERTON9 May 20161,396

Only rarely does water flow uphill, do clocks run backwards, or does hell freeze over. And it’s even more rare when an MSM-er doesn’t trash Donald Trump.

Michael Hirsh is a certifiably blue-chip establishment journalist: His resume includes stints at Newsweek and National Journal, and he is now the national editor atPolitico.

And yet, on May 5, even as most of the MSM was busy flailing away, as usual, at Trump, Hirsh raised eyebrows when he published a provocative article headlined, “Why George Washington Would Have Agreed With Donald Trump/ Watch Out, Hillary: The Founding Fathers would have loved ‘America First,’ and they might have been right.”

Hirsh’s story was mostly a discussion of Trump’s foreign policy, and it must be said that he was, shall we say, judicious in his actual personal praise for Trump. Yet at the same time, Hirsh afforded Trump — and, as we shall see, Trump advisers — plenty of pixels to make their argument. And the result was a piece that ended up displaying more than a little sympathy for the Trumpian worldview.

Deploying a broad-gauge historical perspective, Hirsh put Trump’s campaign — notably, his April 27 speech to the Center for the National Interest in DC — into useful context:

Trump is also correct in suggesting that the current global system is an aberration in American history, that it may not be sustainable forever under current conditions, and that America should focus more on fixing our own economic house for a long time to come (a view shared, incidentally, by Barack Obama, who loves to say “it’s time to focus on nation-building at home”). The U.S. share of global defense spending has soared to more than a third of the total, while the American economy has dropped in size to one-quarter of global GDP; America spends more in total than the next seven largest countries combined: China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Britain, India, France and Japan. And to what end exactly? No one can quite say.

Yes, that is a good question to ask about our far-flung commitments: To what end exactly? And since it’s the American taxpayers — as well as their sons and daughters in uniform — who are bearing the burden of internationalism, maybe we, the people, should start demanding some better answers. (As an aside, we can add that the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, another high-ranking MSM-er, asked some of the same probing questions in his latest column, even if he seemed more sure than Hirsh that Hillary Clinton has all the answers.)

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In his concluding paragraph, Hirsh observed that, through it all, Trump is undeniably connecting with his audience:

At a time when many Americans are angry and feel dispossessed, and when they blame the rest of the world for their ills — egged on by Trump’s rhetoric about getting “raped,” for example by China — it may be that voters do want another choice. Trump appears to be offering one, and a lot of people are listening.

Interestingly, it wasn’t too long ago that Trump’s views on foreign policy and national security were seen by many as crippling to his candidacy. After Trump attacked George W. Bush’s handling of 9/11 and the Iraq War in the February 13 debate in Greenville, SC, an unnamed Republican “strategist” chortled to Katie Glueck, another Politico reporter, “Trump’s attack on President George W. Bush was galactic-level stupid in South Carolina.” Well, not so fast there, Mr. Insider-Expert; Trump, of course, triumphed in the Palmetto State primary a week later.

Looking back on that moment, we might today observe that Bush 43 is popular in much of the Republican Party, and yet at the same time, there’s considerable disgruntlement about the way that the “Great War on Terror” has been fought over the last 15 years — especially by those who actually did the fighting and the bleeding.

Indeed, when one thinks about Republican politics in this young century, we can see that at times, the GOP platform has seemed to consist mostly of foreign wars, open borders, and cuts to earned entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. By that reckoning, maybe it’s hard to believe that Republicans have done indeed as well, politically, as they have done. (Thank God for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi!)

Still, the landslide defeats that the Republicans suffered in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections speak to a deep weakness in the party’s national agenda — what might be called, uncharitably, the Bush-McCain-Romney agenda. And that’s what Trump obviously seeks to change.

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But does Trump really mean it? Or, to put it another way, can he really do it? In view of his track record, in life and, more recently, in politics, it would be a mistake to underestimate him. Yet, at the same time, whether one loves him or loathes him, it must be observed that he will not be governing alone — the Constitution guarantees that.

As veteran anti-tax activist Grover Norquisttold the Washington Post, if the New Yorker wins in November, his “art-of-the-dealing” will be put to the test. Speaking of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, Norquist said, “The three of them have to agree.” And so, Norquist — who is regarded as more libertarian than Trump — added, thinking of a President Donald, “I sleep well at night.” That is, our constitutional system guarantees a carefully modulated outcome.

This stipulation, about the stubborn power of the separation of powers, brings up another point: Politics is a team effort. And speaking to the importance of team-building, former Reagan education secretary Bill Bennett said of Trump, in the same Post article, that this is not the time to criticize Trump for his alleged faults, but rather, “Now is the time to surround him with good people and work with him at the convention.”

Norquist and Bennett are correct. As our possible 45th president, Trump would still have to negotiate with the Congressional leadership — maybe even Democratic leadership. Yes, the White House is the bully pulpit, but politics is always, and only, the art of the possible. Or, as Washington wits say, “The President proposes, and the Congress disposes.”

So we should pay close attention to the team that Trump pulls together. For starters, there’s the question of his running mate. As an astute analyst here at Breitbart observed the other day, the most important decision that Trump will make between now and the election is his vice-presidential pick.

Yet the rest of the Trump team is important, too. As they also say inside the Beltway, “personnel is policy.” And so, already, people are starting to flyspeck the Trump campaign for portents of things to come.

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And so far at least, fans of American jobs and domestic manufacturing — which is to say, almost all Americans — should be heartened by what there is to see. As bespeaks his background as a builder, Trump has always been a champion of the “tangible economy” — that is, of the America that actually makes things, as opposed to just moving around zeroes on a spreadsheet. And certainly, Trump’s proposed tax and trade policies signal his strong commitment to factories and blue collars.

Yet, in our continuing examination of the campaign tea leaves, we might wish to pause over this intriguing quote from that Michael Hirsh article in Politico; a senior adviser told Hirsh that at the base of Trump’s foreign-policy vision was a “Hamiltonian emphasis on having financial independence through manufacturing.”

So, there are the eight words that mean so much. There are the eight words — Hamiltonian emphasis on having financial independence through manufacturing — that mean so much to our economy, offering us a way out of the zero-sum financialism of recent decades and also the solid prospect that we will continue to preserve our political sovereignty in the next century.

So let’s think about those words and parse them out.

First, “Hamiltonian” refers, of course, to Alexander Hamilton. Having dropped out of college to join the fight, Hamilton served as George Washington’s aide-de-camp through most of the American Revolution, although toward the end of the war, in 1781, he took command of a combat battalion and led it to victory at the Battle of Yorktown.

After the war was won, later in the decade, he co-authored The Federalist Papers — a body of work that helped persuade the states to ratify the Constitution. Then, in 1789, President Washington appointed him to be our first Secretary of the Treasury. And oh yes, he’s the guy who’s also remembered for having been killed in an 1804 duel. Even great soldiers can get outgunned.

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Hamilton has always been prominent; his image has graced the $10 bill since 1929 —and with no end in sight, even as other dead white males find themselves on the outs.

However, Hamilton has gone from big to bigger, having enjoyed a huge revival in recent decades. In 1997, the prominent American historian Michael Lind publishedHamilton’s Republic: Readings in the American Democratic Nationalist Tradition; that work, as well as other of Lind’s writings, inspired scholars to rethink, and revise upward, their assessment of Hamilton’s role as a key nation-builder. Then, in 2005, another historian,Ron Chernow, wrote a highly regarded biography of Hamilton, further raising his standing.

Of course, the most startling breakthrough came in 2015, when Lin-Manuel Miranda debuted Hamilton, the musical, on Broadway. Who knew that a man who had been dead for more than two centuries could be such a sensation? Miranda’s opus managed to combine rousing entertainment with solid scholarship — Chernow was closely involved in its production. In fact, the show has been honored with a record 16 Tony nominations.

Yet amidst all the hoopla, it’s important not to lose sight of exactly what Hamilton, the man, actually stood for in his life and why he is important today — and important to Trump.

First and foremost, as we have seen, he was a staunch American patriot.

Second, he was both a visionary and a policy wonk. He could see a Greater America, but he also had the patience to navigate his way through the mass of detail that is actual governance.

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/09/hamiltonian-8-words-tell-donald-trump-serious/

Bulldozing Monuments and the War on American History

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by JARRETT STEPMAN11 Jan 20161032

Editor’s Note: The following is a debate with Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation over the New Orleans City Council’s December 17, 2015 decision to remove four monuments relating to the Confederacy. Read Sandefur’s article here.

On December 17, the New Orleans City Council voted to remove four Confederate statues from the city, using obscure “nuisance” laws to strip these over 100-year-old historic monuments from their places of display. Mayor Mitch Landrieu said it was a “courageous decision to turn a page on our divisive past and chart the course for a more inclusive future.” Of course, the plan to remove the statues is itself divisive as a number of preservation organizations havefiled lawsuits to save the monuments.

The New Orleans statues to be removed are of General Robert E. Lee, General P.G.T. Beauregard, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The city will also remove an “obelisk dedicated to the Battle of Liberty Place” according to CNN. The Lee andBeauregard statues are on the National Register of Historic Places.

The most controversial of the monuments on the chopping block is the Battle of Liberty Place monument—dedicated to a Democratic white supremacist paramilitary group that fought the state and federal government during Reconstruction. But an adjacent commemoration was constructed in 1974, which states, “Although the ‘battle of Liberty Place’ and this monument are important parts of the New Orleans history, the sentiments in favor of white supremacy expressed thereon are contrary to the philosophy and beliefs of present-day New Orleans.”

There are times when it is acceptable for monuments to come down: Americans tore apart a statue of King George III during the Revolution, Lenin and Stalin statues were destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and most Americans today remember the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue during the second Iraq War. These were all revolutionary events in which an old regime was entirely replaced by a new one, a clean break with the past.

However, the war on Confederate monuments is part of the most recent effort by national activist groups to strip elements of American history deemed offensive and not in line with their current, ever-evolving political agenda. They wish to do more than create a new political order, and insist that the only way for the U.S. to move forward is by entirely erasing the past.

The anti-Confederate monument activists are not just setting their sights on the Confederacy, but American history as a whole—deep down they make little distinction between the Confederate founders and the Founding Fathers of the United States. There are plenty of reasons for critics–both contemporary and modern–to attack the Confederacy, especially theideas that were at its cornerstone. Yet neither the ideas nor the personal character of the monuments’ likenesses are particularly relevant in this crusade. All that matters is that they are currently politically incorrect.

Those who argue to remove the Lee and Davis statues, for instance, claim that the two illustrious men were traitors and not even from New Orleans, so the statues are inappropriate on those grounds. However, this is clearly not their real standard. The statue of Andrew Jackson is next on next on the agenda, yet Jackson saved New Orleans from British capture during the War of 1812 and was one of the staunchest unionists, known for his famous phrase, “Our federal union, it must be preserved!” He had deep ties to New Orleans and was the furthest thing from being a secessionist. But Jackson owned slaves and killed Indians in war, so he must be purged alongside Jefferson Davis. Similar arguments can be made about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and a never ending list of now unacceptable historical figures.

America doesn’t need a whitewashing of history, it needs a renewed commitment to the leaders and inspiring people, heralded and unheralded, who made this country what it is today–and an understanding of those who may have caused it harm. New monuments and reinterpretations of the past will undoubtedly arise, but this should not necessitate the bulldozing of priceless and irreplaceable works of art.

The current efforts to fundamentally transform history are fueled by people who believe America has been rotten since day one and want nothing less than total political and cultural revolution. It would be a travesty and a foreboding sign for America’s future if there is no attempt to preserve these monuments against the push of a temporary majority or—more accurately—an incredibly vocal and insistent minority.

In the last few years alone, leftist activists have been relentless and often successful in their pursuit of dismantling this country’s past in an attempt to recreate the nation in their own image. Amongst many other examples they have attempted to remove:Alexander Hamilton from the $10 bill, Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson from annual Democrat Party dinners, President William McKinley’s name from Mount McKinley, and even progressive forefather Woodrow Wilson’s name from Princeton University. And perhaps most disturbing of all is the effort to dig up Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from their graves in a park in Memphis, Tennessee. Even the dead are not allowed to rest.

For the modern Robespierres there is simply no difference between the ideas of Thomas Jefferson who wrote that “all men are created equal” and Confederate founders such as Alexander Stephens who claimed that “our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.”

Backers of the movement to eradicate the Confederate monuments in New Orleans claim it is an attempt to bring unity to the to the now mostly-black community, yet it does the exact opposite. As Ian Tuttle wrotein National Review, “The Left’s Confederate-eradication frenzy is not meant to promote healing or encourage dialogue but to enforce conformity,” he continued. “…the goal of folding up the Confederate battle flag — or discarding a bust or renaming a school — is not to facilitate racial unity by minimizing the visibility of potentially hurtful displays. The goal is to impose a uniform ideological perspective on dissenters.”

When this agenda is stoked and accepted, monuments will increasingly face a permanent and revolving ideological test, subjected to destruction after sudden shifts in power and minor changes in the cultural milieu.

New Orleans suffers with rapidly climbing murder and crime rates, some of the worst roads for a major city in the United States, unsafe drinking water, and sky-high levels of debt. It is only now starting to build an effective system of education based around school choice, after scoring among the worst in the country for generations. Is the crusade to remove the monuments going to change any of this or fix racial tensions? No. And it will come at a great additional cost.

A city that struggles to fill potholes should perhaps be focused more on the immediate problems at hand than demolishing century old statues. As Ellen Carmichael noted inNational Review, “One New Orleanian said he spoke with a contractor who said that the cost to remove just the statue — without its foundation — and store it for a single month would top $1 million. This could instead be used to pay for the salaries for 228 new police officers during that same period.”

If Americans continue to back down to the relentless attempts to erase our history—essentially everything that falls outside of the constantly shifting and increasingly narrow band of ideas acceptable to the modern intellectual left—there will not be merely fewer statues of Robert E. Lee and old Confederates. There will be little of this country’s history and ideas left to protect, reflect on, and uphold. We will live in an intellectual and moral wasteland in which the only views deemed acceptable to express or examine come from the loudest and most indignant purveyors of social justice haunting college campuses.

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