BEN BERNANKE’S BROMANCE

Hamilton did everything he could to undermine the limits on governmental powers in the Constitution

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is in love with another man – Alexander Hamilton. Defending his man’s honor on his personal blog published through his new employer, the left-wing Brookings Institution, Bernanke recently said he is “appalled” that the U.S. Treasury Department is considering removing Hamilton’s mug shot from the ten dollar bill and replacing him with a woman (Bella Abzug? Elinor Roosevelt? Oprah? Who knows).

Bernanke makes a case for “the greatest of our founders” on his June 22 blog entry, but in doing so he gets his economics and his American history exactly backwards. He first praises Hamilton for his part in “creating the Constitution.” But the plan for the Constitution that Hamilton favored – a “permanent president” who would appoint all state governors who would have veto power over all state legislation – was summarily rejected by the constitutional convention, as was his proposal for a national bank. Hamilton abandoned the constitutional convention after a couple of days, eventually condemning the actual Constitution that was adopted as “a frail and worthless fabric.” Some constitutionalist, eh Ben?

Hamilton then spent the rest of his life doing everything he could to undermine the limits on governmental powers in the Constitution. His legalistic arguments provided (and provide) the template for future generations of slick, deceiving lawyers like himself to rewrite the Constitution through case law in a way that has completely destroyed its government-limiting functions. It was Hamilton who first invented the idea of “implied powers of the Constitution” and who first crafted the argument for using the Commerce Clause as an excuse for unlimited governmental powers. (For example, two centuries later Justice Stephen Breyer would argue in favor of a federal law banning firearms near public schools on the grounds that: 1) education affects labor productivity; 2) labor productivity is an important part of all commerce; 3) today virtually all commerce crosses state lines; 4) therefore, under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution the federal government has a right to regulate guns and just about everything else having to do with local education. There are thousands of similar lawyerly subterfuges in American jurisprudence).

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