Hamilton's Vision

"For much of our history, the Jeffersonian hostility to an energetic federal government served us well. But with the end of the frontier and the shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy, the expanding role of government in protecting and assuring our 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' has become utterly essential. All the major problems now befuddling us--the destructive excesses of finance capitalism, a profit-based healthcare system, an increasingly contaminated atmosphere--are only soluble if we regard government as the chosen representative of our collective interests as a people and a nation."

Joseph J. Ellis in the Los Angeles Times argues against the limitations of limited government.