The Founders’ Warning About the Dictator President

America's first political parties. But despite all of those clashes, at the end of his life after Hamilton dies in the duel, because they're both united in believing that Aaron Burr is a traitor who's trying to raise an insurrection in Spanish Louisiana and set himself up as a dictator. After they both united against Burr, Jefferson places a bust of Hamilton across from his own in the central entrance hall of Monticello. You can see it there today if

you go there. And he passed it. Jefferson would say, opposed in life as in death, and he viewed Hamilton not as a hated enemy to be destroyed, but a respected adversary to be engaged with. And that spirit of civil dialogue and learning how to listen to the other side disagreeing without being disagreeable, is one that we've vigently got to get back today.

in history, John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. And Hamilton pauses for a long time and then he blurts out the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Vince's jeff He works in his diary that Hamilton is for a monarchy bottomed on corruption, and he proceeds to found the Democratic Republican Party in order to resist

the alleged dictatorial ambitions of Hamilton and the Federalists. And Jefferson's convinced from his studies of history that all elective monarchies and with popular leaders like Caesar converting themselves into hereditary despots. And that's why Jefferson wants a one year termlament for the president. When he gets a copy of the Constitution, he writes to Madison that a future president might refuse to leave office, so we need a one

year termlament. Now, the anecdote is so interesting because, as Ron Cherno, the great Hamilton historian, notes, when Hamilton praised Julius Caesar, he must have been joking. He insisted throughout his career that the greatest threat to America was an authoritarian demagogue like Caesar, who could overthrow popular elections and consolidate power in his own hands. Hamilton's solution, amazingly, is

a life term for the president. Basically, if the presidents are like Hight, he says, he won't be tempted to extend his term, and that's too much at the Constitutional Convention. But amazingly, James Madison and gouvernor Morris at some point support a version of a life term, so Hamilton wasn't totally off on his own. Nevertheless, you know, the Constitution chooses no term limits, and then Jefferson establishes the tradition of stepping down after two terms. Washington, of course, famously

gave up the office like Cincinnati, returning to his farm. Yes, but it was Jefferson who, by reaffirming that tradition establishes it. And you know, I've just been looking into it in light of the recent question about whether or not President Trump can run for a third term. That Jefferson tradition holds until Grant, who actually does want to run for a third term, but Congress subjects and he kind of

pushes back. The first president who's nominated and runs for a third term, of course, is Theodore Roosevelt on the third party ticket. He promised not to run again, and then he breaks that promise, and then Franklin Roosevelt and NFDR is such a great example of the kind of Julius Caesar because he's attacked throughout his term as a would be Caesar, and he dresses up in nineteen thirty four like Caesar. He has a Caesar themed birthday party, and Eleanor dresses like a Roman matron, and he in

the middle. But it's in the middle of World War two. So he arranges to be drafted by the Democratic Convention. He runs for a third term, and then he wins a fourth. He dies after eighty two days after his election. Is the fourth term, and then Republicans in Congress just think, we this cannot happen again a president who keeps running.

So in nineteen forty seven, Congress, which has been retaken by the Republicans, proposes the twenty second Amendment, which says you can't be elected to the office of president more than twice. It's ratified in nineteen fifty one, and ever since then, that's pretty well stuck. I mean sometimes Ronald Reagan wanted to repeal the twenty second Amendment after he left office, but there haven't been any real efforts to do it. It's relatively popular, and that brings it to

our current debates. The President Trump had noted that his staff had discussed this potential loophole where you could run as a vice president, be elected, and then the elected president could resign and you could succeed that way. President Trump called that probably too cute, and I saw that just this morning. He seemed to acknowledge that the amendment clearly forbids a third term. He'd say, I'd say, if you read that, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run.

But the debate is so interesting because it goes back to Hamilton and Jefferson to that dinner party that defined America. And the point is that all of the Framers are very concerned about presidents extending their power through dictatorial means. All the ancient republics of Greece and Rome had fallen because the virtue of the citizens hadn't led citizens to protect liberty and had made them succumb to these demagogic leaders.

And that's why, though we've debated exactly how to impose term limits, I think Harry Truman put it best when he in nineteen fifty said he I think he said, I know I could be elected and continue to break the old president, but it shouldn't be done. The president should continue to be limited by custom, based on the honor of the man in the office. And I think that's a great way.

it's very important. Now so we have That was the introduction to your book, and then you're talking about how the will of the majority should always prevail Thomas Jefferson's declaration those one of the things that Steve Bannon was saying. He said, well, the will of the people is the kindstitution. And I'm like, well, no, I believe that the Constitution is a written document, and I think it is very important to have an established standard that is out there

that is external to the people. I think you have to have some kind of an external standard so that you don't wind up with a dictator, or so that you know that you've got a dictator if they ignore that standard that's there. As someone who is working with the constitutional issues all the time with your organization, what do you think about that?

are mobbing the courthouses and the federal Armory. And Hamilton says, imagine that SHA's rebellion had been led by a caesar or a cattle line, he would have begun a demagogue and turned tyrant. So so much of the Constitution is designed to slow down deliberation, to prevent mobs from formalizing, to put on checks on direct democracy. At the same time, the will of the people must ultimately prevail. And that's why Jefferson's great vision was that the will of the

majority should always ultimately prevail. He wanted to, believe it or not, a constitutional convention every nineteen years, so that the people could decide whether they still supported it. Hamilton was a disastrous idea because it would, you know, as a miracle the first convention had succeeded. But that balance between democracy and rule Biolits is central. Fdr is really amazing here. And you're so right about the importance, the

urgent importance of studying history. I was so struck by how presidents throughout history have actually invoked the Hamilton and

Jefferson debate to structure our understanding history. I was inspired to write the book when I saw that John Quincy Adams trace the entire development of America's political parties back to the initial debate between Hamilton and Jefferson about democracy versus aristocracy, which is the question we're talking about now, And that kind of Hamilton and Jefferson go up and down throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, and Lincoln says

that he's a Jeffersonian even as he's extending the powers of Congress dramatically. During the Civil War, Theodore Roosevelt leads a Hamiltonian revival when a historian called Herbert Crowley calls on him to deploy Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends. In other words, the Hamiltonians strong federal power for the Jeffersonian ends of democracy in curbing the corporations. But the most amazing turn, Hamilton stock crashes. After the stock market crash

in nineteen twenty nine. No one likes Hamilton. Franklin Roosevelt in nineteen thirty two reinvents the Democratic Party as the party of Jeffersonian democracy rather than limited government, and he makes Jefferson the patron saint of the New Deal. Now, this takes incredible hunts. Franklin Roosevelt's expanding government more than any other president in history. But he puts Jefferson on the nickel, and he builds the Jefferson Memorial, and he

reinvents himself as the patron saint of Jeffersonian democracy. So this just shows how protean, how malleable Hamilton and Jefferson are. Both sides are often invoking them, you know, for both purposes.

But then to close this part of the story, Ronald Reagan said that he left the Democratic Party in nineteen sixty because it had abandoned the principles of Jefferson and limited government, and he proposed to reinvent the Republican Party as the libertarian Jefferson rather than the Jefferson who hated the banks and the patron sainted a New Deal. And that really does bring us to today, where as you suggested, the sides are so scrambled, and in some sense both

sides will still invoke both folks. President Trump said that he was running for office in twenty twenty because Democrats wanted to take down statues of Thomas Jefferson, and he was defending the founding ideals. Although he's certainly using executive power in ways that Jefferson would have questioned, whereas Joe Biden and the Democrats, you know, everyone's a Hamiltonian after the musical and President Obama, yeah, exactly at the White

House and stuff. But they're hardly fans of Hamilton's fiscal responsibility or his principles of you know, of capitalism in the free market. So we're very much as always debating the legacy of these men. But that basic tension you just identified between democracy and rule by elites is central American history.

And yet you know, they're pushing for a central bank, which neither of them liked. And so you know, it's kind of interesting to me, like I said, you know, we have this increasingly centralized all powerful government like Hamilton wanted to have. And yet everybody wants to pretend that they're Jefferson at the same time that this veneer of Jefferson that's there. Maybe with us Musical Hamilton, they're going

to change that and finally own what is really there. Yeah, by the time you get to the third chapter, you talk about the struggle of the bank. Let's talk a little bit about that, because both of them are on different sides in terms of the bank. The Central Bank likes Hamilton. They put him on the ten dollar bill, but Jefferson they put him on a short lived two dollar bill. But talk a little bit about the struggle over the central bank and the national bank.

most important constitutional memos in American history. Jefferson says that it's unconstitutional to create a bank because the Constitution allows Congress to create all means necessary and proper for promoting its enumerated ends. And although Congress has the power to tax and to promote the general welfare, creating a bank isn't absolutely or indispensably necessary to promoting the general welfare

or raising taxes. Hamilton responds, and he pulls on all night, or he writes fourteen thousand words, and he said, you should interpret the necessary and proper clause liberally rather than strictly. And as long as a chosen means is conducive or appropriate or use for carrying out an enumerated end, then it's consistent with the Constitution. And since it might be useful to have a bank because that would promote credit, then the bank should be permissible. Washington sides with Hamilton

rather than Jefferson. Then it goes up to the Supreme Court a few years later, and John Marshall, in one of the most important Supreme Court opinions ever called McCullough versus Maryland, sides with Hamilton over Jefferson. Marshall views himself as Hamilton's successor. He's writing Washington's biography. He has next to his desk Washington's papers given him by Bushrod Washington, who's Washington's nephew, and he reads in washington papers Hamilton's

memo about the bank. He paraphrases it almost word for word in McCulla versus Maryland, and in one of the most famous sentences in constitutional history, Marshall says, let the end be legitimate. If the means are appropriate, then it's consistent with the Constitution, almost a direct paraphrase of Hamilton. And then for the next of the one hundred years, the constitutionality of the bank is still alive. Andrew Jackson

resolves to kill the bank. He seizes Martin van Buren's hand and says, the bank is trying to kill me, but I won't kill it. He lets it expire. James Madison eventually, and having initially thought the bank was unconstitutional, changes his mind because he thinks the people have come to accept it, showing that he has a kind of

evolving version of the Constitution. And this question of the ability of Congress to print paper money is central in the Civil War, and Lincoln actually appoints Supreme Court Justices to try to uphold his power to print paper money. And then I won't take you through the rest of

American history right now. But when you think about the biggest disputes in American constitution constitutional history, including the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise which led to the Civil War, the constitutionality of the post restruction reconstruction Civil Rights Act, all the way up to the constitutionality of healthcare reform, it all goes back to liberal versus strict construction. What's necessary,

what's conducive, what's appropriate. And just last week or so, the Supreme Court is debating the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, and it all goes back to that same debate. So I was really struck how central this is. And the main debate in constitutional history is not between originalism and non originalism. It's between liberal and strict construction of the Constitution.

That's you've got that date as seventeen ninety two to seventeen eighty. Let's talk a little bit about that, because of course nullification comes back in in the eighteen thirties and we nearly had a secession, and during the nullification crisis and the tariffs of abomination that happened. I've talked about that many times because you know, it's kind of the situation where they reached a compromise and they were able to defuse it without having a full blown secession,

which happened like thirty years later. And I've looked at it kind of from the standpoint of the fourth Turning thesis of Strauss and how and how they're looking at about every eighty years you have this major restructuring. I said, yeah, it just it was like the society wasn't really primed for it at that point, but the timing was right. Thirty years later, but nullflication was always a big issue.

Talk a little bit about that back in seventeen ninety two to seventeen eighty what was going on with nulflication at that point in time.

pure political hatchet job, basically. So Jefferson and Madison object and they write the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions claiming that these laws are unconstitutional. Madison always takes a moderate and middle position between Hamilton and Jefferson. Sometimes it's so complicated that only he can understands it. And he says, if states don't think that a law is constitutional, they can

interpose an objection. No one knows what this means, except maybe like sending a stern letter saying that they don't like it. But Jefferson goes further and in the Kentucky Resolution, he says, if a state doesn't think that a federal law is constitutional, it can nullify or refuse to obey it. That's too much for Madison. He thinks that would lead

to secession, and indeed it does. As the war approaches, Southern opponents of federal power invoke Jefferson's Kentucky Resolution for the principle that states can refuse to carry out federal

laws that they disagree with. And it comes to a head first, as you said, in the nullification controversy arising out of the tariff of Abominations in eighteen twenty eight, when South Carolina objects that this northern tariff is going to hurt its commerce, and John Calhoun says, who's Andrew Jackson's vice president says that South Carolina can refuse to carry out the tariff. It's an incredible moment of testing for Andrew Jackson. After all, he's a Jeffersonian who generally

likes limited government. But in this noble decision to favor union over secession, Jackson gives a toast. He says, liberty and union, they must be preserved, and he insists on enforcing federal law and not allow South Carolina to nullify. So that is the first great statement of nationalists in

this period. But nevertheless, Calhoun and the Southern Secession has continued to invoke Jefferson, and finally, right before the Civil War, they claim that the South can secede from the Union because we are a compact of states and federal law is not supreme. Once again, Madison disagrees with that. He thinks that once states agreed to form the Union, they can't unilaterally secede. Abraham Lincoln cites Madison and John Marshall and James Wilson, all nationalists, when he denies the South's

power to secede. And that's one of the precipitents of the Civil War, the constitutionality of secession, and it takes the Civil War, and the war came, as Lincoln said, and all the blood and tragic loss that resulted from that to establish the proposition that we the people of the United States, are sovereign, that states can't unilaterally secede for the Union, and that nullification is on constitutional.

people be able to make that determination. And the nation had been born by declaring its independence from Great Britain, and so in a sense, you know, as the writer of the Declaration of independence, he's looking at this and saying, you know, we were born out of secession, and we have the right of self determination to determine where we're going to be. It's interesting that today, of course, we're still seeing echoes of this, especially with what's happening with

immigration and other issues. And we've had another aspect of this it's been added, which of course is the non commandeering thing, saying that you can't force a state to work along with with the federal government on its agenda

if the state doesn't agree with it. I think one of the things that's kind of been the way that they have moved to have a direct confrontation is kind of the oblique method of saying, well, we will pay you money or will with whole funds depending on whether or not you do what we tell you to do from the federal government. And so that method of I call it bribery or blackmail financially. That has kind of kept this issue from coming to a head up to

this point, and we still see aspects of it. When California wants to go their own way on immigration, they threaten them with removing funds, just as they do on issues about bathrooms and gender and things like that.

right to secede. And more broadly, this question of when the federal government can commandeer the states and what the residual state sovereignty is remains crucial. Very Goldwater, when he began to flment the Conservative Revolution in response to the New Deal, said that the Tenth Amendment was central, and on the current Supreme Court, many of the justices invoked the Tenth Amendment in arguing that the Obama healthcare mandate

was unconstitutional and that you can't commandeer the states. Justice Anthony Kennedy was a big fan of federalism and insisted that federal and state power had to be kept within their appointed spheres. He said, the founders split the atom of sovereignty. It all goes back to that initial Hamilton Jefferson debate, and the truth is we're not entirely there's disagreement.

There's not consensus on the question of whether the nation is totally sovereign as Hamilton said, whether the states or sovereign as Jefferson said, or whether there's a kind of dual sovereignty as Madison said, which I think is the best reading of the Constitution, which part where we the people are sovereign, but we parcel out some sovereignty to the states and the federal government and we've got to keep the balance between them.

two polls of Jefferson and Hamilton. Your next chapter here is eighteen hundred eighteen twenty six, and this is President Jefferson, Chief Justice Marshall and Aaron Burr in court.

himself up as dictator of Mexico. So he may not have been technically guilty of treason because, as John Marshall said after Jefferson prosecuted him, the Constitution sets a very high bar. You need two witnesses and an overt act. But there's no question that he was conspiring to secede from the Union. Canald, he was totally abound to Darnold, and that's what was so. And then that's why Hamilton died.

Remember Hamilton really distrusts Jefferson, of course, but he thinks Jefferson is a patriot, and he thinks Burr is a trader, and that's why he calls Burr a trader. And that's why Burr challenges him to a duel and he sacrifices his life because of his devotion to the Union, and Jefferson joins him in this. So after Hamilton dies, Jefferson decides to prosecute Burr for treason. And this precipitates the huge clash between Jefferson and John Marshall and the Supreme Court.

The John Marshall is a Federalist redoubt. After the Federals have lost the election, they appoint all these Federalist justices to pack the courts. John Adams smuggled in martialists chief Justice during the waning days of his administration, and Marshall sets out to defend Hamiltonian values, namely property rights and national commerce over states rights and too much democracy. And

Marshall has these huge classes with Jefferson. The most famous one, Marbury versus Madison, involves can he order Jefferson to turn over a commission that Adams had made to a judge and Marshall doesn't want to issue in order that he knows will be defied because it'll expose the court as weak. We're having today, is the president going to defy the

Supreme Court? Marshall dodges the question by saying the court has the power to order the subpoena, but he's not going to do it now because the act authorizing this isid poena to be turned over as unconstitutional. Even to state this shows he was such a master of what Jefferson called twistifications. He would come up with these where he complicated legal compromises.

in the family. But the point is it's a huge clash. Basically, the class between Jefferson and John Marshall is the clash between Jefferson and Hamilton continued after Hamilton's death because John Marshall views himself as Hamilton's successor, and in the end in the Burr trial, Marshall does order Jefferson to turn over papers related to Burr. This faces Jefferson with a question, and he briefly considers not a bank or abiding by the decision. He does decide to turn over the papers,

establishing the president that the president can be subpoenaed. But Jefferson, in his response to Marshall, declares that the president has an ability to interpret the Constitution differently than the Supreme Court and to follow his own conclusions. This is a principle that becomes known as departmentalism, where each department can reach its own judgment, and carried to its extreme, it would allow the president to defy the Supreme Court when

he disagreed with it. Interestingly, no president has taken that radical position and openly defied the Supreme Court. Lincoln briefly defied Roger Tawny for two weeks during the Civil War, when Tawny ordered him to free a Confederate prisoner and said that he'd unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus. Lincoln didn't do that for two weeks. Then he did comply. But Tawny was acting as a district court judge, not sitting for the whole Supreme Court. So no president has ever openly

defied the full Supreme Court. But the point of that chapter, the clashes between Marshall and Jefferson are that they also establish the constitutional battles that were still facing today between liberal and strict construction of the Constitution. And remember Marshall's approach, which he calls liberal or fair construction, which he gets from Hamilton, is always construe federal power fairly, not to

be unlimited, but broadly consistently with its spirit. And Jefferson, as you said, said if the power isn't explicitly enumerated, then you shouldn't construe it to be present, and you should also carry yourself back to the spirit in which

the amendment was passed. It's strict construction. And that debate is won by Marshall temporarily, but then just to finish this part of the story, Marshall is succeeded by Roger Tawny and Andrew Jackson wants Roger Tawni to constrict federal power and to prevent Congress from chartering a bank, and Tawny gets in and he comes up with a more Jeffersonian approach on the Supreme Court, and it culminates in the debate over the Missouri Compromise, which leads to the Civil War.

in the territories. But then he becomes president. First of all, he doubles the size of the US by buying Louisiana, even though he's unconstitutional, but he swallows his doubts because he's more interested in the obvious benefits of doubling the size of the US. But then he really is afraid that the Missouri Compromise is going to lead to civil war, so he argues that it's unconstitutional, embracing the same narrow construction of the territories clause that he'd rejected in buying Louisiana.

So it gets up to the Supreme Court and it all comes back to that same question liberal versus strict construction of the single word territories, and Chief Justice Roger Tawny, channeling the late but not the earlier Jefferson says, because the Constitution allows you to pass regulations for the federal for governing land in the federal territory singular, it only covers the territory that was held by the US at the time of the founding, not future acquired territories plural.

It's like, what the meaning of the word is incredibly legalistic. And the point here is that you know Jefferson had flipped on this question, and it's the central constitutional question of the anti Bellum period. The entire Republican Party is founded by Lincoln and others in eighteen fifty seven on the proposition the Congress does have the power to ban

slavery in the territories. So Tawny is imposing a contested interpretation of the Constitution above the consensus of the Republican Party as well as many other pro popular sovereignty democrats, and his opinion has the effect of helping to precipitate the Civil War. Tawny wrongly thinks that this will end the divisions over slavery, but as usual, when the court tries to solve the contested question without clear constitutional answers,

it made things worse. And Lincoln says that he will not follow the dread Scott decision except with regard to the parties in the case, but otherwise it doesn't view it as part of the Constitution, interestingly embracing a kind of Jeffersonian view of the president's power to interpret the Constitution separately from the Court. That's when Lincoln stands in front of Independence Hall in eighteen sixty one and he says, I've never had a thought politically that doesn't stem from

Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. I'd rather be assassinated on this spot than abandoned the principles of Jefferson. It's incredibly powerful state by the great emancipator. Why is Lincoln a Jeffersonian? After all, He's embracing a version of federal power that really wants to expand the government in ways

that are consistent with Hamilton's views. Basically because you know, Hamilton's name is Mud and he's viewed as an aristocrat, and the Federalist Party is dead and Lincoln mentor Henry Clay, the founder of the Whig Party, studied with Thomas Jefferson's law tutor, George with and views himself as a Jeffersonian nationalist. So that's why. Plus Lincoln wants to win, and everyone loves Jefferson, so that's why he embraces Jefferson before the

Civil War. But the great constitutional achievement of Abraham Lincoln is to inscribe into the Constitution the principle of liberty for all and by talking about the goals of the Declaration and the Constitution in the phrase liberty for all. He's inspired by Jefferson, and that's what leads to the

post Civil War amendments to the Constitution. It's just an amazing reminder of how central that old Hamilton Jefferson debate was in leading the court to strike down the Missouri Compromise and helping to cause the Civil War.

a plural union. I think it's so inspiring that James Garfield led a Hamilton revival after the Civil War when he read the collected works of Hamilton in the library that Hamilton's son James published them, and Halton Garfield read them and said, I want to make him the patron

saint of reconstruction. Then Reconstruction Congress people like John Bingham, who's an incredible admirer of John Marshall, site Marshall and Hamilton in when they proposed the thirteen, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments, and the fourteenth Amendment in section five gives Congress the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation, beingham is trying to empower Congress in ways that Hamilton would have wanted.

And the first draft of the fourteenth Amendment says Congress shall have all power to make laws necessary and proper to enforce equal protection. He's taking that liberal construction of that necessary and proper clause, all channeled by Hamilton. These guys are such good lawyers, but more importantly, they're great historians. They studied history as kids, they were inspired by their heroes,

and they want to make Hamilton and Marshall central. And then the great debates over reconstruction, and it's such a tragic period because Congress passes these laws and then there's a violent reaction and black civil rights are subverted and

black people are lynched and murdered. And then the Supreme Court goes on to strike down a lot of the pillars of reconstruction, including the Civil Rights Act of eighteen seventy five, which forbids discrimination in public accommodations, and also the ku Klux Klan Act of eighteen seventy seven, which allows the punishment of racially motivated violence. And in striking those acts down, they invoke Jefferson's strict construction of the necessary and Proper clause, and they ignore the fact that

Hamilton had the opposite view. And Justice Bradley is kind of a villain of my book because he really does a number on reconstruction and strikes all those acts down. And the hero of this part is John Marshall Harlan, a great justice named after John Marshall because his father

admires Marshall so much. Harlan he is the president of the Alexander Hamilton Memorial Society, and he writes the only dissenting opinions both in the civil rights cases which strike down the Civil Rights Act and in Plusy versus Ferguson, the infamous case which upholds segregation in railroads, and Harlan nobly says the Constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens, and he explicitlytes Hamilton's broad

construction of congressional power. It takes another one hundred years for Furbid Marshall to read Harland's opinion allowed before he argues Brown versus Board of Education. Today, Justice Neil Gorsich has a portrait of Harlan in his chambers, showing that Harlan has been embraced by strict constructionist conservatives as well as liberals alike. But it all goes back to the Hamilton Revival when Bingham wants to make Hamilton rather than Jefferson, the patron saint of reconstruction.

It's amazing that Jefferson is the guy who, before the Founding says, oh, we should a little rebellion every now and then is a good thing, and we should pardon those whiskey rebels, and we've got to moisten the blood of tyrants with revolution. I mean, he endorses much revolution, but then he becomes president and totally switches his tune. When Vermont rebels against his hated embargo. Jefferson has this disastrous economic policy. We're cutting off all trade with the

rest of the world. New England.

all the way up today. And the last time it was invoked it was during the Civil Rights movement, and then George H. W. Bush involved it to put down the Rodney King riot. So that was the last time.

But this question, which is obviously central now both with the Puzzi Comitatus Act and also the question ken President Trump send guards from one state into another, goes back to that initial Hamilton Jefferson debate, and I having read the Insurrection Act as it was amended over the years, it does seem to give the president pretty broad authority

to send the troops, even for domestic law enforcement. Although Jefferson and Hamilton initially thought that you couldn't federalize the troops for domestic law enforcement only to put that insurrection or serious external threats, but because Congress has succeeded in the expansion of executive authority over the years, the president's authority may be unconstrained.

Crowley was the founder of the New Republic magazine. As it happens, I spent almost two decades there the legal affairs at it her a while ago, and I just thought that was an interesting phrase, and I was so struck that Roosevelt used it and quoted it word for word when he said, I am a Hamiltonian with regard to my views of federal power, and a Jeffersonian in my views about democracy, so obviously the categories were getting scrambled.

And this is the period when Theodore Roosevelt makes Hamilton the hero of the progressive era, and then Coolidge and Harding make Hamilton the hero of the Gilded Age. Coolidge really admires Hamilton, who he studies at Amorrist College. He revers the Founding, in particular the Puritan basis of the Founding, and he sees Hamilton as a patron saint both a free enterprise and of limited government. It's so striking, and there's a huge change in the understanding of executive power

in the election of nineteen twelve. If you had to pick a single moment for the growth of the modern imperial presidency would be nineteen twelve, when both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the Progressive and Democratic candidate, say that the president is a steward of the people who should directly channel popular will, and William Howard Taff, the old constitutionalist, thinks that they're both demagogues and that the founders thought

that the president should be a chief magistrate who enforces the laws of Congress but doesn't communicate directly with the people. Interestingly, all three of them are historians who love Hamilton and Theodore Roosevelt, isn't it? I thought this was so cool. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a biography of Gouvernor Morris, who is a big Hamiltonian. He's a great historian as well as

a great leader. Woodrow Wilson is the only president who ever got a PhD in history or in anything, and he admires Hamilton, although he also admires Hagel, the German philosopher, and criticize the natural law separation of powers basis of the Declaration of Independence. And William Howard Taff thinks that Hamilton and Marshall are the greatest Americans ever and writes

a book on presidential power. So, George will once told me that you can tell what kind of conservatives some one is today based on where they would have stood in the election of nineteen twelve. And if you're a kind of populist conservative, then you'd love Wilson Roosevelt. And if you're a constitutionalist conservative, you'd like William Howard Taft.

The Struggle for Democracy over Aristocracy. And FDR invites Bowers to speak to the Democratic Convention of nineteen twenty eight and he's a huge success, and then he reinvents himself as the second coming of Thomas Jefferson based on his

reading of this book. FDR is a Hudson Valley aristocrat who you'd think his grandfather had actually been an ally of Hamilton, but he just identifies with Jefferson, the Democratic aristocrat and who he's collecting stamps and tracing his ancestry back to the founding and decides to make himself the second coming of Thomas Jefferson. But this raises the question of the limits on the New Deal administrative state. As you said, independent agencies were created during the Progressive era

by Woodrow Wilson and Louis Brandeis, who's another hero of mine. Actually, Brandeis was a great Jeffersonian. He admired Jefferson more than anyone, and in constructing agencies like the FED and the Federal Trade Commission, he viewed them as a combination of public and private control that would prevent too much centralization in the federal government. And Brandice upheld the constitutionality of the independent agencies in the nineteen thirties in a case called

Humphrey's Executor that was a unanimous Supreme Court decision. That's the central question in the Supreme Court's going to hear in a couple of weeks. Are independent agencies constitutional today? And lots of folks think are going to overturn that Humphy's Executive decision and strike down the agencies on the so called unitary executive theory, which says that the president can fire anyone he appoints. Who's the patron saint of

the unitary executive theory? Alexander Hamilton, he came up with the idea of it in his Pacificus letters, and Reagan administration lawyers invoked it when they first came up with the unitary executive theory. And who's the patron saint of the constitutionality of the independent agencies? To Thomas Jefferson, who brandis invoked in the Humphrey's Executor case. So once again I think you got the thesis of the book. Now it all goes back to that initial class.

Now we've got Hamilton with his own musical, and we have Jefferson who is now decried as someone who had slaves, and so there's been a reversal of that. And I think that's kind of a key thing for where we are right now, because again people would have this veneer of Jefferson there, but they were really were consolidating power, because that's just the nature of politicians and politics is

that you would have a consolidation of powers. Act and said, but speak a little bit about that and where we are, because we're nearly out of time, let's go some closing statements here as to where you see us right now in terms of this being pulled from one poll to the other. Jefferson and Hamilton.

the Constitution, liberty, equality, and government by consent. They disagreed about how to apply those values in practice, and they had fierce debates over the proper balance between liberty and power, with Jefferson thinking every increase in power threatened liberty and Hamilton thinking that increases in centralized power could secure liberty. The point of the Constitution is not agreement but debate.

The Constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing points of view as justice, Oliver Wendel Holmes said, and disagreement is not a bug in the system, it's a feature. But the debate has to involve listening to the other side, not involved viewing the other side as enemies, owning the Libs and owning the Conservatives. We've got to be committed to the process of deliberation itself, and that's why the Hamilton and Jefferson debate is so inspiring. As long as

we maintain it, we will keep the republic. And it's only when we reject the debate itself that the shooting begins.

on these different issues. Thank you so much again. The book is let me get the title again here, it is the Pursuit of Liberty, How Hamilton Versus Jefferson ignited The Lasting Battle over Power in America by Jeffrey Rosen, CEO of National Constitution Center. And where's the best place for people to find this? Do you sell this directly or on Amazon?

website there the latest single. But he of course he is a recording artist. He said, the latest single speaks to it, does yes? Please share that Scott Helmer dot com and you can see it his website. He's got a new single that is there. Thank you so much, Scott, and thank you to all of you. Have a great day. The common Man, they created common Core and dumb down our children. They created common past track and control us. They're Commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing

and the communist future. They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God. That is what we have in common. That is what they want to take away. Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know everything about us, while they hide everything from us.