The prior article in this informal series was, in some ways, out of order, and it originally carried the same title that this one now does, as I changed directions on the fly, but didn’t catch the details. I discussed the general anger at both parties, but concentrated on the anger of the electorate with the Republican Party. In doing so, I referred time and again to a belief structure known as Jacksonianism. And while I’ve provided the links, not everyone wants to read a scholarly article of the length that Walter Russel Meade wrote. Nor does everyone have the time to read the nearly as lengthy (but thought provoking) writings of the first person to tell the two parties to take a flying leap. So, briefly, what makes a person a Jacksonian, then?
Well, never fear, because this article is here to summarize it for you.
Firstly, we’re warlike. I don’t mean that we’re war-mongers, or even like war. But we don’t shy away from smacking down someone (or spending 50 years standing guard) when it’s necessary.
An observer who thinks of American foreign policy only in terms of the commercial realism of the Hamiltonians, the crusading moralism of Wilsonian transcendentalists, and the supple pacifism of the principled but slippery Jeffersonians would be at a loss to account for American ruthlessness at war.
THOSE WHO prefer to believe that the present global hegemony of the United States emerged through a process of immaculate conception avert their eyes from many distressing moments in the American ascension. Yet students of American power cannot ignore one of the chief elements in American success. The United States over its history has consistently summoned the will and the means to compel its enemies to yield to its demands.
Secondly, while we like some federal programs, we really don’t like the government telling us what to do or how to raise our kids.
Suspicious of untrammeled federal power (Waco), skeptical about the prospects for domestic and foreign do-gooding (welfare at home, foreign aid abroad), opposed to federal taxes but obstinately fond of federal programs seen as primarily helping the middle class (Social Security and Medicare, mortgage interest subsidies), Jacksonians constitute a large political interest.
Lately, even that liking of Social Security has wavered, dragged down in part by the Medicare boondogle. A Jacksonian might feel guilty, having a relative on the “Plan D” prescription benefit, but knows in his or her heart that much of the problem is caused by one’s own failure to plan for retirement, since “social security will take care of it.” This is why some of the plans floated to end SS involve a graduated ending; reducing the benefits for people who are under 30 today until the whole program goes away. As Jacksonians don’t shy away from fights, it’s likely that pragmatic (as opposed to draconian) proposals along that line will resurface if a Jacksonian revolt takes place. These will, of course, be demonized by the existing parties.
Thirdly, Jacksonians see the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, as the citadel of liberty. Every member of the NRA is, in some respects (if not many of those given here), a Jacksonian.
Fourthly, Jacksonians believe you can go to hell if you want to. It’s none of our business if you want to worship some other version of God, or Allah, or Budda, or even funky aliens. We believe in our own version, you worship yours, and we’ll both mind our own business. That works best. Now, we’ll draw the line if your religion involves sexual explotation, assault/murder, terrorism, or any other asocial activity that is a physical (or financial) threat to others, but by and large, we don’t give a damn if you want to do the nasty with your own sex or six of the opposite, or even change your own. It may seem creepy to some of us, but it’s your life. Gay marriage? Enh, marriage needs to be divorced from religion. Problem solved. Whomever you are and however you want to live your life, just don’t expect your hijinks to be held up as a positive example for our kids, ok? Or even respected, for that matter. (Yes, I’m talking to you Brittney. And you, Madonna. And… oh hell, half of the entertainment industry.) Your right to be an ass doesn’t preclude or prevent my right to criticize you. It’s this distinction that the press often always fails to note. But this sort of belief isn’t just domestic, it applies to foriegn policy as well.
Jacksonian chairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are the despair of high-minded people everywhere, as they hold up adhesion to the Kyoto Protocol, starve the UN and the IMF, cut foreign aid, and ban the use of U.S. funds for population control programs abroad.
So why, if this resonates with you, and if you believe that you’re actually in the “silent majority,” do the Jacksonians not have a greater say in our government today? Simple. We haven’t had any well-known leaders in the media.
A principal explanation of why Jacksonian politics are so poorly understood is that Jacksonianism is less an intellectual or political movement than an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public. And it is doubly obscure because it happens to be rooted in one of the portions of the public least represented in the media and the professoriat.
But in the ’90’s, the “right” started being represented by talk radio, and now the internet is here. The only reason the right (including the Jacksonians) doesn’t have an influential bunch of lunatics like the DU’ers or Kossacks acting as a tail wagging the dog is that we’re a bunch of fiercely opinionated and independant people, who have yet to find their own rallying point. And one can be sure, if and when such a point appears, the media and professoriat will do their level best to discredit it/him/her. (Paging Juan Cole! Paging Juan Cole!) We can count on it.
Where do Jacksonians come from? To reach the fifth point, this must be examined. Jacksonianism started as a culutral meme of the rural Scots-Irish, a hardy people forged from a millenia of war. From there, it spread all across the demographics of America. It even ensnares people of other nations who come here because this nation reflects their beliefs, not just their opportunity. Such people are American in heart and soul even before they set foot on our soil.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, among others, has said that the United States is unlike other nations because it is based on an idea rather than on a community of national experience.
Times have changed and the Scots-Irish were long ago outnumbered by other immigrants, but the belief hasn’t changed. Instead, it spread:
The new Jacksonianism is no longer rural and exclusively nativist. Frontier Jacksonianism may have taken the homesteading farmer and the log cabin as its emblems, but today’s Crabgrass Jacksonianism sees the homeowner on his modest suburban lawn as the hero of the American story.
To use a current controversy for a demonstration: It isn’t fear of immigration that drives Jacksonian opposition; it’s fear that the pace of immigration, the reason, and belief structures of illegal immigrants threaten the ability, already seriously endangered by the government and existing political parties, to hold on to that modest suburban lawn. Is it a vaild worry? In a word, yes. Because by entering illegally, the alien has challenged one of the core beliefs adopted from the Scots-Irish.
It’s one that hasn’t changed; one that’s key to the whole structure, and embodied in a word you don’t see much used anymore outside the military (a place Jacksonians are heavily overrepresented, unsurprisingly) and not at all in politics: Honor.
So, Fifthly: Jacksonians believe in honor and integrity. Your word is your bond and all that, so be careful about giving it on important things–like marriage. It includes things like following the rules, even if you don’t like them, not flauting them and then asking for special treatment. Honor is a life value to a Jacksonian, even if he or she professes not to understand the word in those terms.
The first principle of this code is self-reliance. That’s a polite way of saying those that won’t help themselves should be left to rot instead of sucking down our tax dollars, used by one or the other of the political parties to buy support. Give them adequate schools and a way out, but if they won’t take it, the hell with giving them my money to sit on their butts.
Real Americans, many Americans feel, are people who make their own way in the world. They may get a helping hand from friends and family, but they hold their places in the world through honest work. They don’t slide by on welfare, and they don’t rely on inherited wealth or connections. Those who won’t work and are therefore poor, or those who don’t need to work due to family money, are viewed with suspicion.
The second principle, Respect, builds on the first.
We give respect to those who earn it, either through ability, deed, or sometimes simply age (with wisdom). And according respect means according dignity; an insulted and disrespected Jacksonian is often a dangerous Jacksonian, and an enemy for life. (Extreme Jacksonians have been known to stuff and mount their grudges, passing them down to future generations. “War of Northern Aggression,” indeed.)
(Note: Meade treats Respect as a sub-point of self-reliance; I raise it to an independant point in this article, as I believe it should be. Other points have been similarly moved, to relflect their importance in the debate.)
Behind that comes the third principle: equality.
Among those members of the folk community who do pull their weight, there is an absolute equality of dignity and right. No one has a right to tell the self-reliant Jacksonian what to say, do or think. Any infringement on equality will be met with defiance and resistance. Male or female, the Jacksonian is, and insists on remaining, independent of church, state, social hierarchy, political parties and labor unions.
(Emphasis added–you need to read the “Unions Due” category for why, if you’re new here.)
The fourth principal of honor is individualism.
The Jacksonian does not just have the right to self-fulfillment–he or she has a duty to seek it. In Jacksonian America, everyone must find his or her way: each individual must choose a faith, or no faith, and code of conduct based on conscience and reason. The Jacksonian feels perfectly free to strike off in an entirely new religious direction.
Which brings us back to the fourth belief above, does it not? Meade thinks there are serious limits to the extent of such free-thinking, but I disagree, based on the traction “civil unions” and even gay marriage has gotten within supposedly conservative bastions. It’s not moderation of political and moral fiber; it’s gaining the recognition, if not support of the Jacksonians through appeal to their belief that everyone should live as they wish, within proper limits.
Although women should be more discreet, both sexes can sow wild oats before marriage. After it, to enjoy the esteem of their community a couple must be seen to put their children’s welfare ahead of personal gratification.
And there are some limits, especially for children. Jacksonian parents have the unquestioned right to set those limits for children, and woe betide anyone else who sticks their nose in to tell a them how to to it.
Corporal punishment is customary and common; Jacksonians find objections to this time-honored and (they feel) effective method of discipline outlandish and absurd.
And from there, we can move back to immigration and show why opposition to the current state of affairs (let alone any form of reward for flauting the law) runs counter to Jacksonian belief. Amnesty would be akin to rewarding a child with ice cream for throwing a temper tantrum because he was served broccoli.
Financially, Jacksonians are a mixed bag. If a set of wide parameters can be drawn around their belief structure, it the sixth belief would be in an open, loose financial policy personally, and a tight fiscal policy governmentally. In short, Jacksonians prefer that they have access to easy credit with low interest rates, allowing them to spend for luxuries far beyond the absolutely necessary, but that their government should excercise fiscal restraint, not borrowing money, nor wasting it on frivolous non-necessities. Most especially, not wasting it on supporting a permanent underclass–or “pork class” for that matter. Such funds were taken from the Jacksonian, and thus are entrusted to the government to be used as seen fit by the people from whom the funds were removed by force of law. Many Jacksonians would be happy if the government spent on nothing but national defense and enforcement of necessary laws — and what they deem necessary is usually somewhat less than what we have.
Lacking a home to call their own, and suspicious of government spending and governmental power, Jacksonian traditions get expressed in many ways and from both parties: Flat Tax; check boxes to direct funds to specific programs; cutting U.N. subsidies; and suggestions to abolish Cabinet-level offices like Energy, Education, and even Homeland Security. All of these spring from the Jacksonian thought mode.
To date, the party that has expressed a platform closest to their beliefs has been the Libertarian Party, but is has been fatally handicapped by its idealistic stands on foriegn policy and society in general. Jacksonians recognize that in today’s smaller world, simply withdrawing to our own borders is tantamount to national suicide. And worse, some limited government is a bargain with the devil, but it’s better than no government at all. “Communism requires that all men be angels for it to work; Libertarianism assumes that they are,” is how one person put it. Whether that was an original by the author who wrote me, or if he was quoting someone else, I am not sure.
So what does the future hold? Will the Jacksonian tradition find it’s own identity and political party, or will it continue to make a deal with the two devils we know? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that continuing the path we Jacksonians have followed thus far will only result in more of the same. The Contract with America lies in ruins, and the constitution is tattered.
It’s time for Jacksonians to recognize themselves for whom and what they are. Only then can we advance our agenda, and it appears that a third party is a necessity for doing so, as the Republican party thinks it can continue to ignore the will of the masses, and the Democratic party has simply jumped off the deep end.