My personal opinion is it started with Polk (He is my personal vote for worst president ever, Wilson is second for me), Manifest Destiny and the idea of expansi

My personal opinion is it started with Polk (He is my personal vote for worst president ever, Wilson is second for me), Manifest Destiny and the idea of expansionism, it ebbed and flowed from there until Wilson but the seeds where set when Polk saw that he could use the federal government to expand the influence of the United States. But even with that there where the inclinations from the beginning. I mean the current state of America would have been a dream of Hamilton's, while it would have been Franklin's and Jefferson's worst nightmare of the dystopia, they were trying to prevent. The reality is we got it wrong, the federalist voices were too strong, while I will give that the articles of confederation were too weak, the compromise towards the federalist was too strong. We need to get back to something closer to a confederated republic and away from a federal empire.