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Quote of the Day: Alexander Hamilton and the Dangers of Dissent
“There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.” — Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton, one of our great Founders, intended to speak to his contemporaries about the disruption that could happen in his times. But he clearly was warning all of us about the dangers of dissent and rebellion when they disparage the values of this country.
We live in times when Progressivism has poisoned the ideas of liberty, respect for personal freedom and acceptance of free speech. The louder people protest and cry for action, drumming up fear and hate, the more attention they get. They care nothing about this country but only about power and government control. And many of us are beginning to feel helpless against the onslaught, condemning their actions but no longer knowing what to do against their agenda. These are sad and frightening times.
Published in Culture
That captures my feeling … as of 7pm on November 8, 2016. Wake up every day not with admiration but with gratitude to Donald J. Trump. We need to beat Progressives with an electoral stick in every race from the county commission and sheriff’s department to POTUS in 2020 and continue to stock the federal judiciary with liberty conservatives for another six years.
I’m with you @quakevoter. But we also need to make inroads in the education system so that our kids have half a chance to get some balance in their understanding of the United States! And then there’s the mainstream media!
But these are also times of hope—hope that people who’ve been sitting on the sidelines all this time feel something which makes them get up and take action.
It can be patriotism, a desire to fight to keep the regressive scoundrels (progressives) from ruining what made this country great.
It can be fear, a fear the left is on the verge of turning the US into the same socialist paradise Venezuela has become.
It can also be revulsion, where folks are simply sick and tired of putting up with the antics of the left, like staging “die-ins” at Publix grocery stores to “raise awareness” of school shootings. Two asides: 1) These die-ins are probably David Hogg’s last desperate ploy to keep his name in the news, and 2) sooner or later these protesters are going to be arrested for disturbing the peace.
No, I think the election of Trump shook the left (and the complacent right) up so much, they’re getting desperate. Their reckless behavior and over the top rhetoric the last year-and-a-half probably turned off a large number of Democrat voters, most likely straight, white, blue collar, gun-owning Christian men.
You’re right, @stad. Paradoxically the optimist in me is screaming to be heard. I keep thinking of the independent voters; I think a lot of them are ambivalent–disliking Trump but also seeing the positive things that are occurring. I hope we can find a way to draw them in. If the Left keeps calling for things like more taxes, we have a chance!
True. I keep thinking of Walter Mondale’s saying he was going to raise taxes. At least he had the decency to say it before the election, not afterwards (a la GHWBush). As a result, the public held Mondale accountable by giving Reagan a landslide victory.
If the Republicans get their act together on repealing Obamacare (along with needed reforms), building the border wall (along with eliminating the lottery and chain migration), and curbing spending (and defund Planned Parenthood! It ain’t hard), they will be rewarded at the ballot box.
I’m gonna bang on yet again about how demographics influence politics.
Political activism, popular commotion, and social disruption, are pursuits of the young. The prime period for such activities is when one is between the ages of 18 and 35. Paradoxically, this age cohort also has very low voter turnout rates. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, if you will.
Here is the 2016 population pyramid for the United States. Please note where the two bulges are located:
Within ten years, the top bulge will be centred around the 70-to-74 range. They’ll be very high when it comes to voter turnout, but at that age one has little energy for manning barricades.
Within ten years, the bottom bulge will be centred around the 35-to-39 range. This is the age when folk really start to get married, have kids, and buckle down at work. i.e. They have much less leisure time for manning barricades.
Within ten years, the 18-to-35 range will be in marked decline, relatively-speaking. So, the prime “social commotion” cohort will in a state of dissipation. In other words, wait a decade and the tenor of politics is sure to quiet down a bit, unless the USA imports a massive number of 8-to-18-year-olds during that time.
Now, let’s look at 1776. I don’t have a population pyramid for the American colonies, but I do have the ages of the Founding Fathers at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Here’s a partial list of famous revolutionary participants who were within the 18-to-35 range on July 4, 1776:
Marquis de Lafayette, 18
James Monroe, 18
Charles Pinckney, 18
Henry Lee III, 20
Gilbert Stuart, 20
John Trumbull, 20
Aaron Burr, 20
John Marshall, 20
Nathan Hale, 21
Banastre Tarleton, 21
Alexander Hamilton, 21*
John Laurens, 21
Benjamin Tallmadge, 22
Robert Townsend, 22
George Rogers Clark, 23
David Humphreys, 23
Gouveneur Morris, 24
Betsy Ross, 24
William Washington, 24
James Madison, 25
Henry Knox, 25
John Andre, 26
Thomas Lynch, Jr., 26^
Edward Rutledge, 26^
Abraham Woodhull, 26
Isaiah Thomas, 27
George Walton, 27*^
John Paul Jones, 28
Bernardo de Galvez, 29
Thomas Heyward, Jr., 29^
Robert R. Livingston, 29
John Jay, 30
Tadeusz Kosciuszko, 30
Benjamin Rush, 30^
Abigail Adams, 31
John Barry, 31
Elbridge Gerry, 31^
Casimir Pulaski, 31
Anthony Wayne, 31
Joseph Brant, 33
Nathanael Greene, 33
Thomas Jefferson, 33^
Thomas Stone, 33*^
William Hooper, 34^
Arthur Middleton, 34^
James Wilson, 34*^
Benedict Arnold, 35
Samuel Chase, 35^
Thomas Knowlton, 35
William Paca, 35^
John Penn, 35^
Alexander Hamilton knew of what he spoke, precisely because he was a key member of the “social commotion” demographic cohort of his time. Presumably, he didn’t want the rest of his cohort to usurp the position he’d attained for himself.
@misthiocracy, I do appreciate the context in which Hamilton lived and worked, and you make very good points (and I recall your making them previously). Historically young people have not voted, but I can’t help wondering if the “rallying of the troops” happening on college campuses coupled with the extreme bias of the mainstream media could change the demographics. Maybe not drastically, but I worry that there could be a shift. What do you think?
How will the demographics “change”? Are you arguing that the current crop of 18-to-35s are going to start reproducing in unprecedented numbers? Even if they did, the political effects wouldn’t start to be felt for another two decades.
Alexander Hamilton, for all the great things he did for this nation, played a major role in passing the grotesque Alien and Sedition Act.
… in 1798, when he was 43 years old.
One might hypothesize that he could see that a new cohort prone to “social commotion” was following in the footsteps of his own cohort’s social commotion, and so he took legislative steps to prevent them from usurping the power that his cohort has amassed for themselves.
Seems it worked, too. You don’t read much about 18-to-35 year olds making a big splash in American politics and governance in 1798.
Demographics, man. Demographics. You gotta be born at the right time.
Mis, I just realized I’m confused by your comments. I’m saying that this generation of college-age kids may finally get out to vote. They are the ones creating a lot of disruption and feeling their own power (even though they may be misguided about how much power they actually have). They are actually registering to vote; what makes you think they won’t exercise that right this time around?
Proportionally, no they won’t. Roughly the same percentage of this cohort will vote as did previous cohorts.
The difference is in the total numbers.
To (over)simplify the phenomenon, say you’ve got a cohort of 100 people, and 25% of ’em vote. That’s 25 votes.
Now, say the next cohort has 1000 people, and 25% of ’em vote. That’s 250 votes.
This makes it look like cohort#2 is voting “in record numbers”, but really it’s just a function of the cohort being bigger in the first place.
Now, say that the cohorts did increase their voter turnout, even marginally. Say they increase their voter-turnout to 26%. That means one extra vote for Cohort#1, but an extra ten votes for Cohort#2.
Small shifts make way bigger differences if your cohort starts out large to begin with.
Another point: If the voter-turnout rate for the “social commotion” cohort stays around 45%, but the voter-turnout for the rest of the electorate goes down, the relative effect is the same as if the youth turnout rate had itself increased.
He did. Wasn’t this John Adams “baby”? Just sayin’ . . . .
Ok, but still, remember that as that cohort ages its voter turnout rate will increase. By the same token, as that cohort ages its political priorities will change and its propensity for “commotion” will decrease.
In short, the so-called “millenial generation” will be in the electoral driver’s seat going forward, but the list of “things millenials want” will change as that cohort ages.
Analogy: Think how few 1968 hippies were still hippies in 1983. They had the numbers, so they controlled the political zeitgeist, but their preferences changed as they aged.
Today, the Boomers have already started to die off. The 2016 election was the first one where the number of eligible Boomer voters decreased.
In 2020, the Boomer vote will have decreased even more, while the Millenial vote will have increased due to increased turnout as they age. The media age for that cohort will be in the 25-to-29 range in 2020.
The last election year in which the 25-to-29 range was dominant was 1984:
You’ll note who won re-election that year, carrying 49 out of 50 states.
In spite of our back-and-forth, @misthiocracy, I really do appreciate your elaboration on these points. Thank you!
FIFY
;-)
A great Quote of the Day with excellent comments. Thanks, @misthiocracy for your graphs and analysis!
This conversation is an entry in our Quote of the Day Series. We have many openings in the new June 2018 Sign-Up Sheet and Schedule, along with tips for finding great quotes.
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You forgot one:
Neutral Observer, 17
(She’s going to kill me if she logs on today!)
Another piece of evidence about how shallow “popular commotion” really is:
“By and large, white liberal students at [the University of Wisconsin] take great pride in their politics despite doing very little work outside of simply failing to be conservative.”
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10955
Why am I not surprised?
As I recall reading, the Abolitionists spent a generation deliberately monopolizing school boards and local newspapers. They grew the voters they needed to ratify Prohibition.
So propaganda in the schools has been with us for a long time. There’s no getting rid of the radicals! Thanks, @cliffordabrown.
Sorry to chime is so late (been on travel) and to start off with a somewhat off topic item but…it would be an interesting exercise to model this pyramid with some reasonable set of assumptions around a United States where Roe v. Wade did not exists and explore how those changes might impact the politics of today. Just sayin’…
Glad to have you chime in, @philo. Do you have some suspicions? I’d love to hear them.
In my rantings in other neighborhoods over the last decade or so, I have possibly not abused any source for quotes more than I have The Farmer Refuted (1775). After skimming the comments above, I am embarrassed that I long ago lost lock on the fact that that pre-Declaration of Independence rant came from the mind of a twenty year old. While it is quite long, my version pasted into MS Word and formatted for easier reading runs 53 pages, it is American history in a wonderfully pure form. Everyone should read it.
A favorite sample:
DISCUSSION ITEM: This really goes back to those tense days, weeks, and months leading up to the passage of PPACA (think of Pelosi and “Are you kidding?”) but that short, four word phrase “or to grasp at” as part of the emphasized sentence jumped out at me then and on many occasions since. Good thing young Hamilton didn’t have a Twitter account.
Fascinating . . . I think I understand what you are saying in the context of the ACA (does anyone really know what they passed?)but could you help me understand how you relate this to your question about Roe v. Wade?
Sorry, that Roe comment is just something that pops into my head every time I see that population pyramid. I wasn’t really trying to tie that to my ramblings on Hamilton.
Yes, from the 50,000 ft perspective, I have the sneaking suspicion that Roe v. Wade was societal suicide…a mortal, self-inflicted wound that will bleed out within a half dozen generations.
But the alternate history may be instructive: What if we were now a country of >400 million instead of 325 million? What if the lower half of that diagram continued as a pyramid? How would that (just the numbers alone, i.e. workers/taxpayers) change the politics of social safety nets? …of immigration? What would the demographics of that larger society look like? The list of questions like that could go on and on…