Before he became the face on the 10-dollar bill, not to mention the subject of a runaway hit Broadway musical, Alexander Hamilton was a principal architect of, and apologist for, the United States Constitution.

Hamilton argued in favor of a strong national government. He was not a pointy-headed liberal. Were he alive today, he would probably be found among the orphaned ranks of what used to be the fiscally conservative wing of what used to be the Republican party.

In his Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration, published in August 1792, Hamilton argued on behalf of the inherent strength of a republican (“little ‘r’”) form of government over, say, a monarchy – monarchy being the prevalent governmental form of the era.

The essential question was this: Could a republic, dependent upon the support and participation of its citizens, survive in the long run? While Hamilton argued it could (and would), he had to admit that republicanism had an Achilles heel that had to do with the character of the republic’s leader:

“The truth unquestionably is, the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion …

“When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents…despotic in his ordinary demeanor—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government and bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

Far be it from me, living as I do in the middle of Trump country, to ascribe the characteristics cataloged by Hamilton to any current politician on the national stage.

On the other hand, if the shoe fits …

The republican form of government finds its legitimacy in the power of the people, acting through their elected representatives, to direct their own affairs. Hamilton’s fear was the rise of the demagogue who consciously, and intentionally, takes advantage of his position and talents to appeal to the dark underbelly of the body politic, to divide, to confuse, to inflame passions, to sew doubt and suspicion about the institutions of government itself,  all in the cause of satisfying the needs of his own ego and welfare first, with the needs and welfare of the country – and its people – being secondary considerations.

Hamilton feared the power of a demagogue to subvert the power of the people, and therefore the nation itself, and highjack both to further the demagogue’s own ends.

Such subversion does not happen overnight. It takes time to dismantle, or render irrelevant, well over 200 years of generally accepted norms and traditions that have put meat on the bones of Mr. Hamilton’s Constitution.

It happens one manufactured crisis at a time, each building upon the other, and all collectively designed to ultimately make the Constitution itself irrelevant in favor of the “gut feelings” of the great leader who claims to know better.

The scenario scared the dickens out of Alexander Hamilton.

And I don’t feel so good about it myself.