Jefferson Memorial Protest

Here are Megan McArdle and Peter Suderman on the group of libertarians who were arrested for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial to iPod music for the 3rd President's birthday.

They were arrested for "causing a disturbance" which seems like a rather dubious charge seeing as they weren't making any noise and weren't directly bothering anyone else, only moving around. Theis seems like a classic example of a charge used by the police against people they just don't like, be they poor minorities or annoying college age libertarians (Perhaps the two biggest threats in the typical cop mind) - We could call it the seatbelt law of the federal memorial.

Needless to say, I encourage anyone and everyone to dance at the Jefferson Memorial in protest of this injustice. Jefferson would be annoyed, and perhaps Hamilton would also. I don't think Adams (our current greatest Founding Father) would be though.

Here's the arrest:

Favorite Founding Father

Radley Balko asks who's your favorite founding father. The current popular pick for the greatest founding father is John Adams, due to the David McCullough book and HBO miniseries... My opinion is that probably the key guy in the Revolution was George Washington, and this he is the most important father. However, I'm tempted to agree with Ron Chernow, and gave my vote to Alexander Hamilton as my favorite.

Hamilton:
- Was the force behind the Federalist Papers and getting the Constitution ratified.
- Set up the banking system.
- Federalized all state debt, giving the national government much more legitimacy.
- Strengthened property rights by preventing the U.S. from defaulting on its bonds and paying speculators rather than those who had already sold their bonds at low prices (as Jefferson favored).
- Set up a functioning tax system. Sure, he used tariffs which were not efficient taxes, but these were some of the few taxes Congress would allow. To fund the rest of the bufget, he established excise taxes well before Pigou was born.
- Set up the Coast Guard to these enforce taxes.
- Also campaigned against slavery, which ultimately didn't go anywhere; and helped establish Hamilton College to educate Native Americans in upstate New York (Two things that didn't have as much effect on the country, but were very decent things to and well ahead of their time).

He did more than anyone to create a functioning federal government, put it on sound financial footing, and set the U.S. up for long-term prosperity. Of course, he couldn't have done any of this if Washington didn't allow him.

Jefferson, who I am not a huge fan of, is winning the poll.