That’s the title of Richard Brookhiser’s latest book. It’s a fun, breezy, and thought-provoking read. I marked a few passages as blog-worthy while I was reading it, and plan to slip a few posts in The Locker Room over the next few days. Here’s the first one:
The 1795 Whiskey Rebellion, Brookhiser argues, was “the most serious domestic violence between the Revolution and the Civil War.? Alexander Hamilton defended his controversial proposal for a whiskey exaction by arguing that it was a good tax in part because it would hit frontier drinkers particularly hard. This ?would certainly not be a reason … to repeal or lessen a tax, which, by rendering the article dearer, might tend to restrain too free an indulgence of such habits.? Taxes should, in other words, be used to shape behavior, not just to raise revenue.
Brookhiser is not persuaded that Hamilton?s position, ?the maximum drug war position of his generation? from “the founder with the most expansive view of the powers of the federal government,? was typical of his peers.
?The founders would not have fought a war on drugs,? Brookhiser concludes.
