Saturday, April 19, 2014
A Devastating Indictment on the Policies of Hamilton, Clay, and Lincoln (The Holy Trinity of Crony Capitalism),
"Henry Clay was the champion of that political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. His system offers shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises.......He was the beloved son (figuratively speaking) of Alexander Hamilton with his corrupt funding schemes, his superstitions concerning the advantage of a public debt, and a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone. His example and his doctrines led to the creation of a party that had no platform to announce, because its principles were plunder and nothing else." Edgar Lee Masters, "Lincoln the Man", 1931.
Like the seven other Senators in
ReplyDeletethe Senate hall of fame ,
Clay was independent, cantankerous, controversial and
successful.
Hamilton led to Clay. Clay led to Lincoln. Lincoln led to TR and Wilson. TR and Wilson led to Hoover and FDR. Hoover and FDR led to LBJ and Nixon. And LBJ and Nixon led to Bush and Obama.......And it isn't just domestic policy that I'm talking about here. You had Clay being one of the leading war hawks wanting us to invade Canada. You had Lincoln squandering half of the country's wealth and 5% of its population on the Civil War. You had TR pushing McKinley (and ultimately taking over himself) into a war with the Philippines. You had Wilson getting us involved in WW1. You had LBJ and Nixon getting us involved in Vietnam. And now we have the Bush/Obama foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteIs this what we call progress BB Idaho? Just sayin...
ReplyDeleteClay ran for president three times
ReplyDeleteand lost three times; he was responsible for the Missouri
Compromise and the Compromise of
1850, a couple of items which,IMO,
postponed the Civil War by decades. He was so busy compromising, both sides disliked him (besides he was a life-long
professional politician).
Progress, RN? We have progressed
in almost every area but politics!
I also give him credit for hammering out a (yep, you got it) compromise with John C. Calhoun that gradually reduced the Tariff of Abominations (of 1828) starting in 1833 - another act that put off the Civil War in that President Jackson was more than ready to send down some 200,000 troops and settle it.
ReplyDeleteOf the more modern Senators I would probably go with William Proxmire and Howard Baker as possible Hall of Famers in that they were pretty decent compromisers, too.
ReplyDeleteHaving a son-in-law from Kentucky,
ReplyDeleteI heard Henry Clay mentioned frequently. So a couple years back I read the biographical study by Heidler. One of his ideas which involved the tariff
was to ease the transition in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, infrastructure particularly. Driven partly by
his wanting to move the then
agricultural south into a mfg
and industrial economy. IMO,
prescient and perhaps might have
changed our history significantly.
Pretty much covers all businessmen and politicians.
ReplyDelete