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CCA III: American Generals: Andrew Jackson - Military Command and Character (LiveStream Hillsdale college - NOW)

President Trump’s address to the United Nations has left pretty much everyone questioning where he is heading, bit for those who support the ideals of Make America Great Again, it was almost exactly the right tone and content. Big players like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, have long been pushing for a Jacksonian Foreign Policy program, whereby the U.S will help other nations, but not fight their wars for them, and it seems that this is exactly the message Donald Trump was trying to deliver. He started the historic speech by pointing out that there are members of the United...

"......While Trump has captured much of the cultural zeitgeist of 21st century Jacksonianism, Cruz adheres to true Jacksonian principles. Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund Chairman Jenny Beth Martin said in her endorsement of Cruz, "We seek a candidate who shares our values: personal freedom, economic freedom, and a debt-free future." Among those looking for a candidate who "shares my values," Cruz received 34% in South Carolina to Trump's 8%, according to exit polls. Trump is the best at communicating culturally to a frustrated Jacksonian Appalachia, but many of his solutions are far from Jacksonian. In sharp contrast to the historical...

Every U.S. president needs people around him who are not afraid to tell him that his latest idea is terrible. Otherwise, he just keeps getting into trouble. “Presidents are cut off from reality when they don't have some trusted adviser willing to save them from their own worst instincts,” said Mark Rozell, public policy professor at George Mason University. And if a president elevates himself too far above the people who were hired to help him out, then how can those people presume to challenge him? White House spokesman Matt Lehrich insists that the nation’s current chief executive is not...

Is a Jackson revival under way? I'm referring not to the late King of Pop but to the 19th century populist president whom his opponents called "King Andrew." According to Michael Barone, in the 2010 elections Republicans have a chance to knock Democrats out of as many as three dozen insecure congressional seats in "Jacksonian districts." By itself, this would merely reinforce the identification of the Party Formerly Known as Lincoln's with the white South. But in a time of popular anger over banker bonuses and lobby-hobbled government, the themes of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian populism have appeal far beyond the...

How does one define terrorism? When drafting my Goals on the Global War on Terror document, that definition needed to be done and to separate terrorism and give it a more coherent view as to what it is all about. Well, looking at the major goals across terrorist organizations, as opposed to standard Nation based insurgencies, the broad swath of terrorist organizations have no standard set of goals, save that they are international in flavor. Islamofascist types seek to install a Caliphate, while the old fashioned Communist International version would prefer that sort of system and your plain old narcotics...

NEW YORK -- The Writing of the American Constitution in 1787 was an extraordinary event, honored as the "Miracle at Philadelphia" by Catherine Drinker Bowen and "the greatest piece of work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man" by Gladstone. Yet as formerly authoritarian countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan begin to draw up their own constitutions and enter the world of representative government, that achievement may come to seem even more extraordinary. The reason is that the issues with which the Founding Fathers were wrestling that hot summer were not particular to...

Are the Jacksonians Sated?   By Michael J. Totten  Published   03/22/2004       TCS    A curious thing seems to have happened since Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown in Iraq. America no longer feels like a country at war. It isn't over by a long shot. There's a bloody insurgency around Baghdad that still needs putting down. Al Qaeda is still out there somewhere, sinister and nebulous as ever. Afghanistan is mostly lawless, and we're still exchanging barbs with Iran and North Korea. But it feels different now. The barbarous acts of terror in Madrid had a far greater impact...

"Those who out of cowardice use their wealth to pay Danegeld to the preachers of hate and destruction must be taught that this aggression will boomerang. A nuclear war stirred up against the 'infidels' might end up displacing Mecca and Medina with two large radioactive craters." -- Fred Ikle, former undersecretary of defense,in the Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2002 One year later, America waits. As I write this in mid-July, intelligence sources say that the level of Al Qaeda activity is as high as -- or higher than -- it was prior to September 11. People at the...