Today, July 11, is the anniversary of the most famous duel in American history, which ended with corrupt Vice President Aaron Burr murdering one of the most brilliant and brave Founding Fathers: Alexander Hamilton. It was a tragedy, not only because Hamilton died prematurely, but because his death was partly the result of his effort to act with excessive nobility toward his opponent, who took advantage of it in deadly fashion.
Joseph J. Ellis in the book Founding Brothers examines the testimony of both Burr and Hamilton supporters regarding the 1804 duel, and comes to the conclusion that both men fired their weapons, Hamilton obviously shot with the intention of not harming Burr (shooting purposely wide), as he had promised beforehand. And Burr shot with the apparent intention of killing Hamilton, though Burr seems to have been momentarily shocked and shaken at his own success. Perhaps the only good result of the duel was that it destroyed Burr‘s career. He could have been as much a threat to the fledgling republic as he was to Hamilton personally.
Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republicans all used quite a few underhanded tactics and anti-constitutional moves, but it is undoubtedly true that Aaron Burr was the man with the least integrity and the greatest viciousness among them. All the Founders (from whichever political faction) had their vices and flaws, but Burr seems to have been consistently a wicked and violent man. In fact, in his book Domestic Enemies, Daniel Greenfield explains how Aaron Burr helped create the destructive political left in America with his corrupt financial deals, admiration of French Revolution-style tactics, backstabbing, weaponized government regulation, and connection to Tammany Hall's rise.
This is why I say that Burr was a threat to America, and why it is fortunate that though he attained the high office of vice president, he never made it to the presidency. And I think we can draw a useful lesson from the Hamilton-Burr duel and Burr's character to apply to the even more radical political inheritors of Burr's party: the Democrats.
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Hamilton, being a better man than Burr, and accepting the duel only after he felt he could not in honor avoid an encounter altogether, deliberately wasted his opening shot. He wrote before the duel that he would do so because he hoped Burr would think better of his murderous intentions and make peace. Burr, on the other hand, certainly aimed to injure Hamilton severely, if not to kill him. By misunderstanding his enemy's character and choosing to take a chivalrous course that was extremely dangerous in the circumstances, Hamilton ended up getting killed. Many patriotic politicians have made the same mistake since, especially modern Republicans, by trying to act nobly or generously or adhering to "the rules" with ostentation, while leftists do anything but.
To give an example, Democrats ignore pretty much any court decision they happen to dislike, no matter how many laws they break in so doing. Republicans, on the other hand, refuse to disobey any court orders, even those that explicitly violate the law and therefore negate the will of the people and our constitutional system of government. The justification is that if Republicans don't obey all the anti-law rulings, Democrats will do the same. But Democrats already do that, without any reference to Republicans' behavior. Republicans thus undermine the rule of law without effectively eliciting any reciprocal behavior from Democrats.
Or again, Republicans refuse to arrest Democrat opponents who have political titles, even with overwhelming evidence that those Democrats violated the law, as with Joe Biden, Ilhan Omar, or Gavin Newsom. The idea is that it would be inappropriate and biased to arrest these law-breaking Democrats, even though refusal to do so perpetuates a two-tiered system of justice. And yet Democrats have repeatedly arrested or sued or even tried to kill Republicans. Like the Hamilton-Burr duel, the "chivalrous" politicians lose more battles than the ruthless politicians do.
It is worth noting that Burr, despite facing charges of murder, never did end up receiving any sentence. In fact, Burr served out his vice presidential term. While we can quibble about the details of the duel as warranting full-on murder charges, one thing is certain. Burr was one of the first leftist politicians in America to escape serious legal consequences for his vicious personal vendettas that turned deadly. And Burr's party didn't insist he step down from office. True, Burr's career did not afterwards advance to the height he had hoped for, but he survived a free man for decades afterwards. In other words, we see the beginning of the corruption of America's system of justice to balance in favor of certain powerful men who might not have had titles, but essentially functioned as aristocrats exempt from the laws. How many leftist politicians now also have that distinction!
Unless patriots wish to see our nation perish, we must not make the same mistake about our opponents that Alexander Hamilton did about his.
