Powered By Blogger

Saturday, September 18, 2010

REBIRTH OF THE WHIG PARTY

Americans who believe like the early Federalist ,Alexander Hamilton, that government was a role to encourage economic development for the defense of the country, have no home in either political party today. The Democrats want government ownership and control. The Republicans hold stubbornly to the one world concept of “free trade.” The result is the valley of death for Americans who believe American prosperity comes first. The vision of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay’s “American System” brought us the Whig Party. The Whigs formed the political might in the Midwest manufacturing belt (from Chicago-Cleveland –Pittsburgh) and the New England Manufacturing crescent (Connecticut Valley, New York, and Boston), bonding management and labor into a common party. These manufacturing areas would propel the young Whig Abraham Lincoln to the head of the Republican Party and the presidency. American Manufacturing policy as Hamilton had envisioned would rule until the 1920s. Progressives in both the Democrat and Republican Party would reject this nationalistic view and slowly insert a world view which took hold after World War Two. There are Whigs emerging again in some factions of the Tea party and right wing Republicans such as Buchanan. Maybe this recession will lead more conservatives to reject the “Chicago and Austrian School” of “Free Trade” economics, which has dominated both parties and western world governments. (see William McKinley by Quentin Skrabec)
Read more about the American Whigs in my Iron Pantheon of American capitalists
Search books by skrabec --- Amazon.com

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Alexander Hamilton Sept 18

Alexander Hamilton is truly the founding father of American Manufacturing. In 1794 he became the nation’s first Secretary of Treasury under George Washington. Hamilton, a Federalist, believed the Federal Government had responsibility for defense and the economic welfare of the nation. In fact, he saw them as interrelated and symbiotic. Unfortunately, neither political party today functions as a Hamiltonian advocate of American manufacturing. As an officer on General Washington’s staff, Hamilton saw battles lost for lack of American manufacturing capability. A true American conservative, Hamilton remains in “no man’s land” today because of his support of a national bank. Hamilton, however, realized that agrarian America lacked a means to supply capital to business. Private banks can perform that function today but then western cities lacked banks to grow industry. Hamilton believed (like Adam Smith) that defense industries needed tariff protection as well. Hamilton envisioned a manufacturing nation and that economic warfare would be part of America’s future. Hamilton’s founding ideas would be embodied in Abe Lincoln’s protectionist policy that dominated America for 80 years and ushered America into its Golden Era of Industry, science, and invention. Hamilton was always denounced by the Jeffersonians, Jacksonians, Democrats, and today by Republicans, but his economic ideas, especially support for a protective tariff and a national bank, were promoted by the Whig Party and after the 1850s by the newly created Republican Party, which hailed him as the nation's greatest Secretary of the Treasury.
See William McKinley: The Apostle of Protectionism by Quentin R. Skrabec
See my Wall Street J quote http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575418680197041878.html?mod=googlenews_wsj