Tom Paine lays out the issues then and now

"... a remarkable series of eight letters To the Citizens of the United States and Particularly to the Leaders of the Federal Faction (1802-5) ... addressed the principal political and social controversies of the (Early Federal) era: pre-emptive war; government as a profitable monopoly; curtailment of constitutional rights in the name of security; the unitary executive; abuse of political and governmental power; the privatization of national currency creation; jingoism and war-whoop mentality; conservative retrenchment in the past versus transformational radicalism; and the place of religion in the public sphere."

Kenneth Burchell, ed. Thomas Paine and America, 1776-1809 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009), 1:x.