I always found it amusing that Thomas Jefferson, who has the reputation of being an egalitarian "man of the people" in tune with the common man, was an aristocrat born to privilege and money, who married even greater privilege and money, with a profligate lifestyle who owned slaves and gained his reputation largely by supporting the interests of big slave owning plantations.

Meanwhile, Alexander Hamilton, who is often disparaged as an arrogant elitist, was a bastard orphaned child of an impoverished broken home who immigrated to the USA with nothing but the shirt on his back, who raised his position in life by working his way through law school and his heroism and dedication during the war, and dedicated much of his life and what little fortune he had toward abolition of slavery.

Then there is the misleading description of the pastoral, bucolic lifestyle. Associating corporate agribusiness with what most people think of as "farming" is nothing new. It has been a common error and means of misleading people for centuries. Let's remember the biggest supporters of slavery were big plantations which were the 17th-18th century equivalent of modern corporate agribusiness - only unlike today, their farming "machines" were human beings.

One of the key reason the south held onto slavery and resisted technology was because the 3/5 rule increased their representation in congress. Even if their operations could be more efficient, more profitable AND more humane by replacing slaves with machines, they did not want to lose their political power which enabled them to retain their special favors from the government in the form of protectionist tariffs.

But these are just examples of the general irony and hypocrisy that those who supported the worst inequality of human conditions (e.g. slavery) were called "egalitarians" and "populists" while those who worked for abolition of slavery were often demonized as elitists.

It also shows yet another form of oppression and tyranny which was perpetrated by government meddling in free markets. Left to their own devices, in a situation of free trade without government subsidies or protectionist tariffs, the south would likely have abandoned slavery as non-economic long before the civil war.

It only goes to show that politics, history and truth are strange bedfellows.