This week The Extraordinary Times caught up with Dr. Jay Cost, Gerald R. Ford senior nonresidential fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a visiting scholar at Grove City College's Institute for Faith and Freedom. He is the author of several books, most recently Democracy or Republic? The People and the Constitution. He lives in western Pennsylvania with his wife, two children, and one very spoiled cat. This Friday, November 10, from 2-3 p.m. Dr. Cost will deliver the 2023 William V. Coombs American History Lecture, drawing on his book The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy.
The Coombs Lecture is free and open to the public at the Harry T. Wilks Conference Center, 1601 University Blvd., Hamilton, OH45011. Co-sponsored by Miami University Regionals and Hamilton High School. RSVP strongly encouraged: https://miamioh.edu/regionals/rsvp/ * What drew you to write about Alexander Hamilton and James Madison rather than, say, the more familiar pairing of Hamilton vs. Jefferson? I was drawn to Hamilton and Madison because they had previously been allies and intellectual partners. They had, in many respects, a shared vision of constitutional republicanism. But they were driven apart in 1790 because those visions were not entirely the same. I thought that looking at them with care would help better understand some of the finer aspects of American political thought. * How, when, and why did America become an "oligarchy"? It has never been, strictly speaking, an "oligarchy" because the people still wield power through elections. However, the government's commitment to national economic development entangled it with private enterprise, which in turn gave the latter a kind of "soft power" that it would not otherwise wield through the democratic process. That did not happen overnight. It grew slowly by accretion in the 19th century, was checked for a time by the Progressive Era and the New Deal, but has expanded dramatically since World War II. * What are the fruits of oligarchy in today's America? Power and money are fungible. The rich exercise a power that the rest of us cannot ever hope to. The result of this is that public policy in this country has an inevitable bias toward those wealthy interests with business before the government. * Can Americans reasonably look to our founding era to resolve the political crises of the 21st century? On a philosophical level, yes I think so. One of the great lasting legacies of the American founding was the way in which the founders took the big ideas of republican political thought and applied them to a young, democratic nation. While our economic, technological, social, and cultural circumstances have changed, these ideas are timeless. The more we understand those ideas, the more we can apply the lessons of the founding to the 21st century. * What is your next project? TBD but my hope is to write an intellectual history of the Jeffersonian Republicans.
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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