User talk:AdRem

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[edit] Serial comma

You really should read this article before declaiming that the absence of the serial comma is "wrong." It is probably preferable to use it on American subjects, like Hamilton (where I left it), but it is not mandatory, even in American English; many of our articles are written in Commonwealth Emglish in its several varieties. Soft edit summaries are less likely to annoy other editors. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I intended the above as well-meant, and largely private, advice; I have seen too many spats over a narrow view of punctuation. If you get yourself into one, fine; all I can do is warn.

I judge extensive to be a cliche, a dead metaphor, and no improvement; and will be reverting again; other than that, the rewrite seems sensible. (You have, I see, already cut matter from the lead, particularly the reminder that Hamilton was intending to "defend against the French" by taking Louisiana and Mexico; but I will see if the result looks balanced.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I oppose GA unless the article can attract a much wider and more learned pool of editors; this article began (see the beginning of the archives) as a nomination for Mount Rushmore, and I expect it always to be either eulogy or unstable, because the Hamilton fan club will ensure it. (Chernow may well be the worst available book on Hamilton, which doesn't help; the best is probably Mitchell, who still likes him.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:56, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Read Chernow all the way through? I may well deserve Purgatory, and may endure it reading unspeakable prose like Had he [Johann Lavien] presented himself as a Jew, the snobbish Mary Faucette would certainly have squelched the match in a world that frowned on religious no less than interracial marriage (p.10); but not, please, in this lifetime. (It is a cliche that the eighteenth century was irreligious, but frowning on religious marriage? Would a Wikipediot who wrote this badly survive?) Chernow abounds in oleaginous apologetic; and, when, as with the Hammond affair (see our article), even he cannot portray Hamilton's actions as the highest possible virtue, he omits them altogether. Even in the appalling wilderness of the Hamilton literature, he is a blight. (Not the worst blight; he did indeed do some primary research, although much less than he and his publisher contend; there are whole chapters with no primary sources, and many of them have tertiary and partisan sources) He has a full index, which permits one to check what he says on any given topic; that is as close as I care to come. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Flexner is not a full life (Hamilton after 1787 falls in his life of Washington, which IIRC was written first), and has a strong psychological theory of Hamilton, which our article does not include (perhaps it should). The best, as far as I has seen, is Mitchell, which any good library should have. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:44, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• Ah yes, I see, a Yalie; that explains so much. ;-> But despite the anti-democratic and anti-American sedition of Timothy Dwight, Yale really doesn't make a habit of producing illiterate, dishonest, Mammon-worshipping faux conservatives.

In all seriousness: Chernow is not a reliable source; he should not be trusted alone, except in his primary research, where it is unavoidable - even there, he must be read with a saltcellar on hand. . The rest of the Hamilton literature isn't much better; despite Flexner's analysis of the problem, he is part of it. And it's not that I won't read Chernow, it's that I can't read him; he falls even beneath his chosen standard of business-magazine prose. It is an insult to many Yalies, and most Cambridge men, to associate his imbecile soleicisms with their writing. The historical reviewers, as opposed to the incompetence of the mainstream media, condemn his prose with his bad history. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I didn't say I'd never read Chernow; I said I couldn't finish him. Between my attempts to do so, and consulting him on particular points, I must have read about half his doorstop. I quote page 10 because it is particularly bad, and its position implies, correctly, that there must be dozens of clangers of the same order. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I've read Syrett (not, of course, all of it), and much of it is to Hamilton; much of Hamilton's writing is his official and business papers. Even so, it is small compared to Washington's papers, or Jefferson's, (or Wilson's, even before he entered office.) Tell me, what other bureaucrat or lawyer do we call a prolific writer? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Responded on talk page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I've read academic reviews of Chernow; the article cites one, on his anachronistic delusion that Hamilton was homosexual. Your description is fantasy. I will not say they were uniformly hostile, and some damned with faint praise; but this is only to be expected: some historians will toady to a commercial success, civility requires something, and he did genuinely do research in some spots; in others he copied the latest tertiary compilation.

My opinion of the Hamilton literature is, in fact, the opinion that all of them have of each other; they happen to be largely right. (And Chernow is by no means the worst; but Lodge and Vandenberg are mercifully out of print.)

But we have a method to decide whether you "approximate the closest thing to the truth that a consensus of current sources can manage". It's simple: cite your sources, as our verifiability policy requires. You have cited none. (If I am right in guessing which current sources you are thinking of, you will find when you consult them again that you have misremembered changes in emphasis for declarations of fact, and are making much stronger statements than your sources ever intended.)

It is also good practice to state facts rather than interpretation. Thus, not the sweeping conclusion that X favored Y; a statement of what X did is preferable. This can be most readily be done by consulting the works which deal with Hamilton's times and are not about Hamilton. They often have no axe to grind, or at least not on him. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

If we do state interpretations we should attribute them, and identify their proponents. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:15, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, come on now. I did not write "The long tradition of Hamilton biography has, almost without exception, been laudatory in the extreme. Facts have been exaggerated, moved around, omitted, misunderstood and imaginatively created. The effect has been to produce a spotless champion...Those little satisfied with this reading of American history have struck back by depicting Hamilton as a devil devoted to undermining all that was most characteristic and noble in American life." Flexner did. Nor are McDonald and Chernow any more charitable towards their dear colleagues. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alexander Hamilton

Hi there! Thanks for the note on my talk page. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can be much help. I don't know enough about Hamilton or the relevant sources out there to offer much more than a layman's opinion on the current article, and it sounds as if you've explored most of the organized resources that could lend a critical eye. My advice would be to keep on keeping on, and try to maintain a cool head in the midst of disputes. If it gets really serious, you can always request mediation. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 18:19, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I meant to note, too, that a request for comment might be helpful. Esrever ^(klaT) 18:20, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I have seen some of your work on this above reference article, and want to commend you particularly for your perseverence in the face of seemingly unrelenting opposition from Pamanderson or whatever they call themselves. I have suspected that editor's tactic is to attempt to exhaust, exasperate, and outlast any opposing editiors in an attempt to be left alone to write whatever innuendo and minority opinion they can get away with. I suspect I am the wildly modern-day Federalist they referred to in the article's disuccion page, btw, just in the interest of full-disclosure and transparency. My life has become too full of late to allow me to participate as I would like to on Wikipedia, but I am glad there are editors like you who can help stay the course. Good luck. Shoreranger (talk) 14:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

No, you are not; did you depart for Citizendium? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Is your note to me a deliberate falsehood? You changed two words of the disputed section, neither of which addresses my concerns (substituting a vague, probably false, unsourced quantitative claim for a definite, if almost certainly false, unsourced quantitative claim isn't much improvement); you then reverted exactly. Please stay off my talkpage if you have nothing better to say than this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)