Our Feuding Founding Fathers - The New York Times

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Our Feuding Founding Fathers - The New York Times
Above is google link that is supposed to for most folks avoid the pay window for the article.

But that raises questions: Which founders, and which principles? For in history, unlike in mythic memory, they fought like cats and dogs over every major issue, foreign and domestic.

Thomas Jefferson’s followers called themselves Republicans, but their enemies called them Democrats — just to confuse us today. They battled the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, of later musical fame. Where Jefferson wanted to construct the Constitution narrowly and favored a decentralized country with a weak federal government, Hamilton and his allies favored a broad interpretation, with a powerful, centralized state that promoted economic development and exercised global power.
Instead of offering a single, cohesive and enduring vision for America, the founders were diverse and squabbling. They generated contradictory political principles that persist to our own day. Instead of offering us an antidote to our divisions, those clashing founders created them.
 
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