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A Brief Reflection on the American Democratic Tradition as it

Relates to the Legacy of Alexander Hamilton
Omar Alansari-Kreger

As critical observes of history it should be painstakingly clear to us that
Hamilton's vision belonged to the future while Jefferson's remained beneath the layers
of an idealized vision of the past. Societies change with the winds of time for better or
worse; in the case of the former, a stronger infrastructure will eventually establish itself
so that it can become more accommodating to an economy that is in step with the
times; that is an indication of its progressive infrastructural dynamicism. A nation cannot
live in isolation no matter what it does to keep itself in that position; eventually, the
outside world will arrive at the proverbial door and those influences will eventually take
root at the home front.
That is exactly what the United States did to the Japanese during the late
nineteenth century. If a nation does not stay competitive with global trends it will
eventually find itself subjected to the will of an outside power. No matter what we want
to believe about our current times we are living in such a world which is why global
economic cooperation and integration an unrelenting intercontinental phenomenon.
Hamilton is a byproduct of his upbringing and realized that idealized privileges are not
preserved through an underwritten social contract that agrees to adhere to the merited
principle of tradition.
Change is inevitable and to the dismay of many it is an inexorable process.
Hamilton understood that the United States was founded on a construct of productive
adventurism which would inevitably employ the minds and bodies of the people. The
United States wouldn't abstain from the Industrial Revolution just to preserve an
agrarian way of life. Why? Resources lose their value when they are idling which
resembles the "piggy bank paradigm of the hoarder. Monies aren't going to produce
sustainable investments when they are amassed and stored beneath the blanket of
arcane cultures of tradition. First World Nations are made based on their coherent
capacity for economic development; if the United States avoided centralized
industrialization much of the nation would resemble a third world hodgepodge and at
that point the preservation of the union would be questionable.
Imagine a world that consisted of a splintered United States where those states
that industrialized thrived leaving the failed states to fend for themselves only to be
locked in resource and proxy wars offset by outside powers. Ironically, we don't seem to
be too far away from that prospect in the here and now; that is the scary reality we
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should all be prepared to address. It is obvious to anyone of us that the times of today
arent the same as they were at the genesis of the American Republic. Centrality does
not necessarily imply tyranny because the American political process situates itself on a
system that instills checks and balances on its conceived notion of democracy.
Those die hard Jeffersonians grimace at the idea of coercion, but as a civilization
increases in size, scale, and sophistication, to some degree, coercion stands as an
eventuality; nonetheless, that does not necessarily imply that big brother is gunning for
your rights and liberties.