If Hamilton's idea of teeming Eastern cities had fully prevailed in the 1790s it is likely that as Americans moved west they would have formed separate nations. A continental nation would have never come to fruition. If Jefferson's idea of a nation in constant revolution and mass numbers of yeoman farmers had prevailed, it is unlikely the U.S. would have ever developed the industrial base that ultimately provided the great markets for the farmers and led to industrial expansion and the global power of the United States. So the two founding philosophies of the nation,in many ways opposites of one another, in their competition advanced the interests of the nation and increased national power. Hamilton's ideas provided the markets and industrial muscle upon which the creation of wealth is based. Jefferson's ideas provided the raison d' etre for the nation and a source of its political stability. People WANT, DESIRE to be part of a nation where they are recognized as rightfully pursuing happiness. Such people had no reason to form new nations as they moved West. The stability and power reinforced one another as the decades passed.
If either the Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian ideas had fully prevailed in the 1790s the nation would most likely have fragmented into separate nations. It was PRECISELY then the willingness to share power with others whom one might disagree with and the willingness to compromise and accept political defeat, that unified the nation. This willingness was fostered not by any benevolence toward one's political foes but by two uniquely(at the time) American political characteristics. Those were, first, the regularity of opportunities for political change in the form most notably of bi-annual congressional elections. Second, most importantly, the diffusion of political power in American life allowed for ambitious men and women to fulfill their political ambitions in others avenues besides the Federal way.States were recognized as having purview in some constitutionally stipulated jurisdictions which federal power had no, or little, authority.
Perhaps it is the increased centralization of federal power in American political life that has led to the greatly polarized and sclerotic American political universe. Politically ambitious elites are less willing to take their ideas and energies to the local or state level, knowing that there is an increasing irrelevancy to them as power and money is coagulated in the federal head.
Last, as a slight aside, it may be the case that the ultimate reason for the Civil War by 1861 was that Hamiltonian policies had almost completely prevailed in the north and Jeffersonian policies in the south. The two regions increasingly saw each other as separate nations that threatened one another.
No ideological victory by a party or faction will advance the interests of the nation. In a democratic republic all political victories must only be temporary and partial or the nation will cease to be a republic and the democratic faction that takes power will ultimately declare itself the majority and extinguish democracy as well. For political victories to remain temporary our elections must continue at short regular intervals AND they must be truly fair and not rigged. For political victories to remain partial, not total, the integrity, concurrent jurisdiction and shared sovereignty of the 50 states must be preserved. Competing jurisdictions are not important to satisfy the parochial concerns of some state's rights fanatics. They are essential to the maintenance of a pluralistic, ideologically diverse democratic republic because they allow for at least the partial fulfillment of the avarice for power so common, especially today, among political elites.
To try to promote an artificial harmony and concord of ideas in this country by legal coercion or social pressure is only to make the divisions in the country worse. The solution is not to limit or diminish the competing ideas but to increase the vehicles by which those competing ideas can not only be heard but can at least partially share in political power. Ideas like these will only come from our localities, up through the states and finally to the federal government. Any move in the opposite direction will only promote the idea that power must be grasped firmly and perpetually because the opportunity to wield it may never arise again. This is the way to friction, faction, and disaster. It is the way our founders warned us not to travel and then lit a constitutional path by which later generations could avoid this unhappy state.
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