Trump as Historian

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Abbeville Institute

Trump as Historian

By Ryan Walters on May 2, 2017

In a recent interview on Sirius XM, President Trump, now completely enthralled by Andrew Jackson, made a couple of interesting remarks about the War of Northern Aggression, specifically theorizing that if Andrew Jackson were President in 1861 there would have been no war.  Trump’s reasoning?  One could presume because Jackson had averted war in 1832 during the nullification crisis.

What can we make of this?

Most historians don’t like to get into hypotheticals because such assumptions are unprovable – in this case there’s really no sure way to know exactly what Jackson would have done in 1861. But aside from the fact that Old Hickory was dead and buried for 16 years before the war, a fact that Trump alluded to, we can speculate that there’s a good chance the irascible Jackson would have acted precisely as Lincoln had – with violence, because that’s what he was planning in 1832 and had authorization with the Force Bill. There would most likely have been bloodshed over the tariff if a compromise had not been reached.           

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For Love of Country
by RAMESH PONNURU & RICH LOWRY February 20, 2017,

defense of nationalism

Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017-02-20-0000/donald-trump-inauguration-speech-and-nationalism
Dark,” “divisive,” and “dangerous” were a few of the negative descriptors that critics attached to President Trump’s inaugural address, and those were just the ones that start with “d.” (A few threw in “dystopian” for good measure.) The critics took him this way in part because he depicted the last few decades of American life as a hellscape from which he would shortly deliver us: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” But the critics also had this reaction because the address had a theme — nationalism — that has itself long been assumed in many quarters to be dark, divisive, and dangerous.

 That assumption has never been justified and should now be discarded. Nationalism can be a healthy and constructive force. Since nationalistic sentiments also have wide appeal and durability, it would be wiser to cultivate that kind of nationalism than to attempt to move beyond it.      https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017-02-20-0000/donald-trump-inauguration-speech-and-nationalism  

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Is Trump’s Embrace of Andrew Jackson a Problem?

By Mike Sabo| May 5th, 2017

The arrival of a column by National Review founder William F. Buckley was almost always of some intellectual and literary significance. With his high command of the English language, Buckley would explore a vexing question of public policy or pillory an unsuspecting political opponent. He often made quick work of arguments that were logically defective and employed witty repartees with the skill of a gold medalist fencer.

 

The columns of the current editor of National Review, Rich Lowry, are something of a different nature. Though Lowry does see problems within the conservative movement and he seems sincerely to want to find solutions, his columns lately tend to slide into gauzy sentimentalism and thinly-veiled anti-Trumpism.       https://amgreatness.com/2017/05/05/trumps-embrace-andrew-jackson-problem/