Liberal Richard Nixon revisionism vs. liberal Alexander Hamilton revisionism

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Nixon did endorse some liberal policies (such as the EPA), even if he was personally conservative. The "Hamilton as progressive visionary" narrative, by contrast, is the product of lazy historianship that divorces ideas from the context in which they existed and the silly idea that policy is synonymous to ideology.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Hamilton was a fervent, radical, and unapologetic opponent of all progressive proposals within his own time period

Not true: he liked industrialization.

Correct, and there was nothing liberal about that in the 1790s. Hamilton was what we would call a business conservative; he supported mercantilism and a centralized monetary policy when he did because such was in the interests of investors, merchants, and the financial classes.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Hamilton was a fervent, radical, and unapologetic opponent of all progressive proposals within his own time period

Not true: he liked industrialization.

Correct, and there was nothing liberal about that in the 1790s.

It was "progressive", though.

Eh, that depends on how you define "progressive." There were certainly segments of the later Progressive movement that drew upon Hamiltonian philosophy, and even Hamiltonian motives, so I can see where you're coming from.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Jefferson promoted the ideal of an agrarian republic because he believed (correctly) that an economy built primarily on wage labor would result in a highly unequal society, with wealth and political influence concentrated in the hands of a very few. Modern liberals and progressives seek to counteract this reality through the creation of a welfare state and market regulations; such innovations would have been inconceivable in Jefferson's time, and so liberals acted to oppose the policies of centralization that served to benefit the monied interests.

Last year's me explains it better:

The Republicans were a coalition of Southern planters and small farmers and tradesmen in the Mid Atlantic initially organized to oppose Federalist policies. They claimed to represent the interests of the "common man," which meant that they opposed efforts to centralize power in the hands of the elites. They disliked banks and manufacturing for a number of reasons: commercial ventures, they argued, were a threat to democracy because they elevated the love of money over the love of country, established a quasi-artistocracy with merchants and bankers at the top, and robbed citizens of their independence by making them dependent on markets for everyday goods (it didn't help that many small farmers were in debt to these firms, and therefore resentful of their influence). As such, they were suspicious of the federal government, whose policies in the last decade of the 18th Century served to elevate these "monied interests." They supported increased popular participation in politics and favored Jefferson's vision of an agrarian republic populated by independent yeoman farmers who would be free of the corrupting influence of money. Following the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Republicans enjoyed an explosion of popularity that would allow them to dominate the national government until the close of the 1st Party System. Some, like their founder Jefferson, were slaveholders, but others were life-long abolitionists (and it's worth noting that Federalist darling Charles C. Pinckney supported restoring the slave trade after it was outlawed in 1808).

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

In Hamilton's America the working class would never have gained the right to vote, and so such ideology would never stand an even remote chance.

It's hard to say how that would have played out. On the one hand, the first state to abolish the property requirement was Kentucky, but even Hamilton's state of New York gave poor white men the right to vote in the 1820s.

Which only happened because Hamilton's political party and the general political attitude that he championed were thoroughly defeated in the previous two decades.

What do you mean? Andrew Jackson didn't win the Bank War until the 1830s!

Hamilton was the foremost champion of the idea that, while all individuals had certain rights endowed to them by God, human beings were basically unequal, and some men were inherently better suited than others to hold the reigns of power. Accordingly, the Federalist Party adopted the attitude that the role of the common people was to show up to vote every two years and then to shut up and let their betters run the country. This philosophy was totally eviscerated by the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800, inaugurating a half-century of democratization that left South Carolina as the only state to retain the property requirement on the eve of the Civil War and paved the way for the rise of Jacksonian Democracy and the centrality of the common man to American political rhetoric.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Hamilton was the foremost champion of the idea that, while all individuals had certain rights endowed to them by God, human beings were basically unequal, and some men were inherently better suited than others to hold the reigns of power. Accordingly, the Federalist Party adopted the attitude that the role of the common people was to show up to vote every two years and then to shut up and let their betters run the country. This philosophy was totally eviscerated by the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800, inaugurating a half-century of democratization that left South Carolina as the only state to retain the property requirement on the eve of the Civil War and paved the way for the rise of Jacksonian Democracy and the centrality of the common man to American political rhetoric.

Then what did Jefferson mean when he wrote of the "natural aristocracy"?

Jefferson did believe that some individuals were naturally more virtuous, but distinguished between the "natural aristocracy" of virtue and the "artificial aristocracy" of wealth. He writes:

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The key here is that while Hamilton considered wealth as evidence of virtue, Jefferson considers it separate, perhaps even antithetical. Furthermore, Hamilton concludes that the common people are essentially devoid of virtue and that government by the many is thus a threat to the rule of reason, whereas Jefferson contends exactly the opposite:

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