Comments (12)

1. I am extremely impressed by this. Unlike most “hip” musicians/writers who attempt similar comedic hip hop performances, It’s obvious that Lin-Manuel Miranda has a real knowledge of hip hop structure and cadence. Well done.

   posted by Ryan on 11-27-2009 at 5:47 pm

2. That was brilliant. Hamilton’s my favorite founding father and I love seeing him get some appreciation.

   posted by CamilleR on 11-27-2009 at 6:16 pm

3. Hamilton was a mercantilist and extremely pro-coercion. He was an economic dunce. He was in favor of government-controlled banking, corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, heavy excise taxation, excessive public debt. His programs included taxing farmers through tariffs and subsidies to build up industry artificially.

   I think it was in Federalist No. 12 that Hamilton spoke against the Confederacy because the states would keep tariffs too low. He HATED international trade like any good mercantilist. In fact, Hamilton was so economically uneducated that he thought competition caused higher prices. He wanted to ban imports into the US altogether. He felt international competition resulted in higher prices and protectionism would cause lower prices. Everyone who has taken the most basic of economics classes knows how backwards that is.

   And, he supported a central bank in order to make the debt a responsibility for all the States, “unifying” them under one national government. He obviously didn’t understand the value of hard-money and real wealth, instead holding fallacious opinions of capital/money that a mercantilist would hold (he believed funding the government debt would create capital in the form of bonds, which it obviously wouldn’t. The bonds are of no real value to anyone; they’re just said to be worth something by the government.)
   So the central bank (the First Bank of the United States) wasn’t established to pay off debt. He chartered the bank because that’s what the British used and he was in love with their system. As soon as the Bank of the United States was created, it began inflating the money supply. It issued millions of dollars in paper money and demand deposits. It invested mostly in loans to the government could spend. The result was a huge outflow of paper money and credit and prices increased over 70% in just five years (1791-1796).

   It cannot be understated how imbecilic and backwards his thinking was on economics.

   posted by Karen on 11-27-2009 at 8:46 pm

4. lol@Karen

   posted by Brett on 11-27-2009 at 9:09 pm

5. Thank you so much for this! He was on Sesame Street recently, and did a great rap for big bird. I have been trying since then to find out who it was…This Guy!

   posted by Erin G on 11-28-2009 at 4:00 am

6. Totally awesome! This, in my opinion, is a sign of true progression of the arts, artists, and the relationship we have with the new WHITE HOUSE.

   I’m glad that broader view is taken of the entertainment field when choosing such acts.

   I would also bet if you sent the link of the video to a grade school child, they’d be much more inclined to remember who Alexander Hamilton was.

   Nice work!

   posted by Alexander Hamilton on 11-28-2009 at 8:39 am

7. That was great! Is that Freddy Flapman from Flychert Real Estate?

   posted by Jason English on 11-28-2009 at 9:06 am

8. Art opens dialogue. It doesn’t have to be right. It just has to be true. Sifting through the facts are the responsibility of each of us. But this sure did inspire me to look more closely at the subject. Thanks to Karen also for a dissenting opinion. It’s quite possible to love this piece and the performer who created it and to disagree with its premise. I’m glad you did, so that we could all see this.

   posted by Sondra on 11-29-2009 at 3:29 pm

9. Lin-Manuel is absolute genius. This is an example of a person who is operating at a high level in a specialized field of talent which he developed to demonstrate the potential capability that lie within each and every person. In this particular performance I took special note of Lin’s lyrical work, as well as his choice in topic as he specifically pointed out Alexander Hamilton as his subject for economic discussion. His live performance was very well rated in my book and that kind of live one-take performance ability, I would be VERY interested to hear what he sounds like recorded. Could you imagine letting this guy have a solid hour of audio to rap on? At the pace his lyrics move he could cover a lot of ground. Another note is use of the chain like associated visual images that he was able to paint in your mind with his words. This man is a genuine genius lyricist, with no fear of running out of things to say, I have a feeling he had to cut out the fat just to squeeze in everything he managed in this monolouge as performed at the white House for president Barack Obama and his First Lady.

   posted by Alex Danielle on 11-29-2009 at 9:38 pm

10. @ Karen:

    Without Hamilton’s Federalist view of economics, Jefferson never would have been able to afford the Louisiana Purchase. A strong federal bank was not so objectionable to the people of the time (Jefferson, maybe the most populist POTUS of all time, never got rid of it) because it helped the newly born, struggling government provide funding for services in territories like Kentucky and Louisiana, where local and state taxes did not yet exist, and to begin strengthening the newly formed US Army.
    Beyond economics, there were social and legal conditions of the time warranting a stronger federal government, such as conformity of laws and regulations in territories without charters or constitutions or established due process of law.
    Hamilton was also the more-closely-listened-to advisor of Washington’s administration (the other being Jefferson). Most Federalists of the time that history has remembered fondly (think Washington and Adams) thought very highly of Hamilton and sought his advice frequently when deciding policy.

    So while you have definitely raised some valid points of why his idea of a Federal Bank did not quite pan out, it’s not a fair assessment of Hamilton as a whole. At the very minimum, you are wrong in your assertion that he was an imbecile.

    P.S. My sister in law very recently visited the location of his duel with Burr near the Palisades in Weehawken, NJ. You can find it at (get this) Hamilton Park along Hamilton Ave (off of JFK Blvd E). I intend on visiting that place when I visit her in a few months.

    posted by Joel on 11-30-2009 at 11:40 am

11. Uh, uh, uh, um, uh … dude needs Toastmasters.

    posted by ccr on 12-2-2009 at 1:34 pm

12. My friends and I are getting extra credit in our class for performing this in front of the other students. We’re actually excited, haha. I think we would do it even if we didn’t get the credit for it, regardless. It helped us learn, which is awesome, but it’s entertaining as well. I love this, I really do. (:

    posted by Erika on 5-19-2010 at 4:53 pm

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