I’ve been reading the very in-depth biography of Alexander Hamilton that was the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical about his life. It’s been quite the educational read. I’ve learned so much about our nation’s early days, and I’ve also kept a journal of all the words the author used which I had to look up because I didn’t know their meanings. It has also served as a very timely reminder that even though we hear people today say that our country has never been more divided, that’s simply not true and is an oversimplification of the problems that currently plague our nation. Students of American history might recall the huge chasm and feud that developed between those in the thought camp of Washington and Hamilton (the Federalists) and those who aligned with Madison and Jefferson (the Democratic-Republicans). After that it was slavery, or women’s rights, or wars, or any number of issues that caused deep divides among our citizens.
One of the things that most drew me to Hamilton’s story was his unparalleled skill as a wordsmith and the way he used that talent to both shape our country and to preserve his legacy. A famous line from the musical says, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” He was obsessive in his need to explain himself, whether it was describing his policy suggestions or defending his actions in his personal life. In fact, it was this amazing writing ability of Hamilton as a teenager that captured the attention of the residents of St. Croix, his boyhood homeland, and caused them to sponsor his passage to and education in America at King’s College. In addition to personal letters and essays, he wrote 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers; at one point he wrote 21 essays in two months! He wrote multiple voluminous reports for Congress about various concerns facing the new government, and he even wrote George Washington’s Presidential Farewell Address. There are a whopping 22,000 pages of his work in a Columbia University Press collection!
And here’s what gets me (and prompted this post)–people actually read his essays! In an age of communication that relied on either the written or spoken word (as opposed to social media, television, radio) he published pamphlets and newspaper articles to explain to American citizens the policies and procedures that the young government was hammering out. In order to convince the states to approve the new Constitution, he (along with John Jay and James Madison) wrote essays in defense of the Constitution that were printed in the newspapers (these became the Federalist Papers). That is what both fascinates me and alarms me. Can you imagine Americans today reading essays explaining political theory in the newspaper? Despite the fact that the number of people reading newspapers has drastically declined in the last decade, I do not believe that most Americans would have the attention span or even the interest to read such in-depth, erudite* writing. So many of us get our news electronically, and in our scroll down, clickbait world, we expect to consume our information in small tidbits. We also expect those tidbits to be both visually appealing and easy to understand, often with a side of entertainment to hold our attention.
But complex ideas often cannot be whittled down to such a tidbit. They aren’t flashy or entertaining. They must be fleshed out, developed, and weighed in order to be truly considered and understood. We must turn them over and over in our minds; we can’t just scroll on to the next thing that grabs our attention. I would humbly suggest that this might be the single greatest factor complicating our political unrest and culture wars today. Our citizens aren’t willing to think for themselves; many probably don’t even know how to do so. Because we no longer teach what was once considered necessary for a proper education in the western world (logic, classic philosophers, ancient literature, the liberal arts) in our public schools, we lack that great canon of thought to both draw from and to unite us. Those were the things Hamilton studied in school–Latin, Greek, Virgil, Cicero, Homer. Where did Hamilton get all his ideas for the many government systems he designed and implemented? He devoured books related to economic policy and government, making sure they were books spanning a wide array of theories and ideas. He had such faith that our country would be a great nation someday, that during the Revolution, Hamilton stuffed the Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce in his satchel. Not exactly light, entertaining reading, but he was reading things that would prepare him for the systems that would need to be put into place to make our nation successful. Kids today don’t want to read the great philosophers or lengthy treatises of government, and I’m certain most teachers don’t want to teach those things either. Our brains don’t want to think that hard. But here’s the thing–the concepts that constructed our democratic republic are not “easy.” They require time to carefully study and ponder, examining them from many angles of history and experience. Unfortunately, whether we realize it or not, our brains are being re-wired toward inattention and distraction. (Read The Shallows; What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, by Nicolas Carr.) We’d rather have the cliff notes of a book or watch the movie. We certainly wouldn’t spend hours reading an essay about economic theories and then discussing it with our neighbors in the street. We are living in a world created by the tireless work, revolutionary bravery and deep thinking of men like Alexander Hamilton, and we are ignorant of many of the concepts that enable us to do so.
There is a story, often told, that as he exited the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had just created. They wanted to know if it was a republic or a monarchy. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” I’m afraid we will not be able to keep it much longer. “The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.” (Richard R. Beeman, Ph.D., writing for the constitutioncenter.org; italics are mine)
We have plenty of citizens who are active today. There’s no end to people blasting politicians on social media or protesting in the streets. In many cases, these are not informed citizens. I’ve heard about things like this on the news, but my son told me just last week about a young co-worker who was involved in an anti-Israel protest in their city. When he asked her if she knew what the group was protesting, she said she didn’t; she just thought it would be “fun” to protest.
I’m certainly not implying that ALL protesters or political activists are uninformed. But it’s hard to know what information to believe today. We live in an age of information overload, and yet we may be the least truly informed and educated people in modern history, partly because we don’t want to do the work of siphoning through all that information, both to remove the bias and hype, and to spend time carefully examining the competing ideas and beliefs.
As I’ve read Alexander Hamilton’s biography, I’ve wondered what he and the other founders would think about the state of our nation today. I’m not sure anyone can really answer that, though I’ve seen many commentators and experts try. I do think he would find us to be a lazy and complacent people. I fear that our laziness and complacency will squander away the republic for which our founders fought, debated, struggled, and sacrificed.
*Erudite is one of the words I learned in reading the biography written by Ron Chernow. It means having or showing knowledge that is gained by studying.
