{"id":6716,"date":"2016-01-19T06:14:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T06:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/01\/19\/andrew-jackson-revenant\/"},"modified":"2016-01-19T06:14:30","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T06:14:30","slug":"andrew-jackson-revenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/01\/19\/andrew-jackson-revenant\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Jackson, Revenant"},"content":{"rendered":"

An excellent article<\/a> by Walter Russell Meade.  Study it, muchachos<\/em>.  Yes, this will be on the final.<\/span><\/p>\n

A revenant is one who has returned from the dead or from a long absence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Has Old Hickory come back as Donald Trump?<\/span><\/p>\n

Though I despise contemporary liberalism and leftism (any difference?), that doesn't quite put me on the Jacksonian right.  Meade:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Lynch law and Jim Crow were manifestations of Jacksonian communalism, and there are few examples of race, religious or ethnic prejudice in which Jacksonian America hasn\u2019t indulged.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacksonians are neither liberal nor conservative in the ways that political elites use those terms; they are radically egalitarian, radically pro-middle class, radically patriotic, radically pro-Social Security.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I am too much of an intellectual, and too much of an old-time liberal, to be a Jacksonian.  At the bottom of the Jacksonian bucket are the rednecks  and know-nothings.  You know the type.  The guy who shoots out the windows of a convenience store because he thinks the proprietor is a Muslim when in fact he is a Sikh.  He doesn't know the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu because he doesn't read books. He is too busy swilling Budweiser at NASCAR events and tractor-pulls.  (He had hisself a coupla  Buds but he was none the wiser.)
<\/span><\/p>\n

At the bottom of that same Jacksonian bucket are the jingoists who confuse jingoism with patriotism.  "My country right or wrong."  And while I believe that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence sense, and all deserve equal treatment before the law, I am no radical egalitarian. I am an elitist, but in the best possible sense of that word.  People are obviously not equal in respect of any empirical attribute.  You could put it like this: we are all equal before God, equally wretched, but among one another plainly unequal spiritually, mentally, morally, and physically.  But my elitism has nothing to do with inherited privilege or blood lines and the like.  It is an elitism grounded in talent and ability and the individual's free development of his talents and abilities.  True, you did nothing to deserve your God- or nature-given talent, but you have nonetheless a right to its possession and development.  If you develop your talents in accordance with the old virtues and become unequal to others in respect of the three Ps (position, power, and pelf), then so be it.  Material equality, as such, is not a value.
<\/span><\/p>\n

And I am certainly not<\/a> radically pro-Social Security.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But if comes down to a fight with vile and destructive leftists, you can bet I will be on the side of the Jacksonian good old boys, locked and loaded.  Meade concludes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 Whatever happens to the Trump candidacy, it now seems clear that Jacksonian America is rousing itself to fight for its identity, its culture and its primacy in a country that it believes it should own. Its cultural values have been traduced, its economic interests disregarded, and its future as the center of gravity of American political life is under attack. Overseas, it sees traditional rivals like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran making headway against a President that it distrusts; more troubling still, in ISIS and jihadi terror it sees the rapid spread of a movement aiming at the mass murder of Americans. Jacksonian America has lost all confidence in the will or the ability of the political establishment to fight the threats it sees abroad and at home. It wants what it has always wanted: to take its future into its own hands.The biggest story in American politics today is this: Andrew Jackson is mad as hell, and he\u2019s not going to take it anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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An excellent article by Walter Russell Meade.  Study it, muchachos.  Yes, this will be on the final. A revenant is one who has returned from the dead or from a long absence. Has Old Hickory come back as Donald Trump? Though I despise contemporary liberalism and leftism (any difference?), that doesn't quite put me on … Continue reading “Andrew Jackson, Revenant”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}