It would appear the concept is lost on the founder of the Tea Party movement as well. I am so very not suprised.
“The small-government conservative movement, which includes people who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the Federalist Papers,” Armey explained. The problem with Democrats and other “people here who do not cherish America the way we do,” he explained, is “they did not read the Federalist Papers.”
And this oversight makes the tea partiers mad. “Who the heck do these people think they are to try to sit in this town with their audacity and second-guess the greatest genius, most creative genius, in the history of the world?” Armey demanded.
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”?
This, from a man with a PHD and who did a 13 year stint as an economics professor. Then again, it was at University of North Texas. Guess it was over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor too.
Historian 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.”
Alas, for Armey, it was the case. Hamilton favored a national bank, presidents and senators who served for life and state governors appointed by the president.
Now I only went to a small southern liberal arts military college-but even us poor folks there learned early on that Hamilton was for a vast body of powers had to be implied by general clauses, and one of these authorized Congress to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper” for carrying out other powers specifically granted. In other words-the very opposite of what your Mark 1 Mod 0 teabagger advocates.
But never let the facts get in the way of a good story-1st law of teabagging.
Did Armey already chisel this “founder of the tea party movement” into his mausoleum a la Burris? This is the first I heard that he was the founder.
I get a kick out of this from Hamilton and the Federalist Papers: ” The provinces of Holland, till they were overwhelmed in debts
and taxes, took a leading and conspicuous part in the wars of Europe.” Things in Europe certainly looked up after the Dutch dropped out.
Dick Armey and his American Freedom works are the primary astro-turfer behind the Tea party movement. Much of the rather silly and manufactured outrage you are seeing started with his lobby.