If it’s cynical, it is nevertheless just how it seems to be. He was much more than the King of the Wild Frontier. This was, of course, all I ever knew which came via Walt Disney when I was seven.
It also was the moment that something changed in my life. I was watching Davy Crockett at the Alamo in full colour on our black and white TV and then, suddenly, I realised that it wasn’t a colour TV set and ever since a B&W TV has been black and white. But until then, I imagined and saw everything in colour.
Anyway, a bit more of Davy Crockett wisdom. Shame Walt Disney didn’t focus on any of this.
I have just finished a novel on Andrew Jackson’s wife, The President’s Lady written by Irving Stone in 1951:
In this acclaimed biographical novel, Irving Stone brings to life the tender and poignant love story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson. “Beyond any doubt one of the great romances of all time.” — The Saturday Review of Literature.
An incredible story of both of them, but it ends just as he becomes president and she almost exactly at the same time passes away. She never even made it to the inauguration. They both had an amazing life – he meets her when she is 16 and already married in what we would today call an abusive relationship. But in 1792 a divorce was only available at the initiative of her husband, which must go through the state legislature which her first husband, unbeknownst to her, never undertakes although she thinks he has. So beyond everything else – including a duel to the death – the marriage is a major political scandal where he is elected although she is, according to the morality of the time, an adulteress!
He arrives in Washington without his beloved wife and finds the atmosphere cold and distant. This, however, is how the book ends.
But he reckoned without the mob of his followers who had come to Washington City from ever part of the Union to witness his inauguration. They poured down Pennsylvania Avenue, streamed through the gates of the White House, found their way into the East Room, devoured the ice cream and cakes and orange punch. They climbed on the furniture to catch a glimpse of Andrew, soiling the damask chairs with their muddy boots, staining the carpets, breaking glasses and china, shouting and surging and pushing, all thousands of them, wanting to reach Andrew and embrace him.
He stood at the back of the room, imprisoned, yet feeling the first glint of happiness since Rachael’s death. These were the people; they had stood by him. They had loved Rachael, they had vindicated her. For that, he loved them, and would fight for them the rest of his days.
They were “the deplorables” of their own time. I was not the first to notice how similar Donald Trump is to Andrew Jackson, but it is more obvious to me now than it was before.
The video of the Battle of New Orleans above is all that I can find of the movie made from the book at the time. In the book, the battle is a minor moment in the story since it is mostly about her and not him. Lots about him, but almost everything is only seen through her own eyes. If she was not present, virtually all other events are only described where she is being told about them either by her husband or by others. A brilliant book and a story I had never even heard hinted at before. This, btw, is the flyer for movie that was made from the book.
Even more than before, I understand that Donald Trump is the Andrew Jackson of our own time.
And here is The Battle of New Orleans as sung by Johnny Horton:
As amazing to me as anything is that this is a compilation of the pictures with the words put together by Diana West which has had almost 18 million hits. If only American Betrayal had had as many hits and readers.
And then there is this, the story of how The Star Spangled Banner was written.
I may have been born and brought up in Canada where the War of 1812 has always had a different meaning. But I am at one with freedom and liberty and in the world today it means to side with the United States of America against its enemies both foreign and domestic.
Perhaps the most interesting part is that the President’s hair has gone completely white. Most of what he says you can find out in the media, but only through the distortions and outright lies the media inevitably brings.
And what is everything about at this time and in America? It’s All About November 3. The point of the article, by Roger Kimball, whose premise I have believed since the start:
I do not believe I am violating the principle of Bishop Butler’s argument when I say that almost everything happening in our society—all the craziness, all the posturing, all the distracting noise, exaggeration, and downright mendacity—all of it is not about itself but about something else, and that something else is Donald Trump….
The unremitting, monolithic wall of noise that has been crashing against Donald Trump since election day 2016 has gotten louder and louder, more cacophonous, more furious, more irrational. Everything is what it is, and not another thing. But the one thing that takes precedence over everything now is defeating Trump, which means defeating not only Trump himself but what he stands for—those 63 million voters who put him in office, for starters.
Do enough of us get it? Will we beat back the tide? That is what is at stake and only time will tell. Read the entire article through and think about what part you ought to take yourself. It’s not long. This is how it ends.
Everything that is happening between now and November 3 is about November 3. But the fundamental choice is not really Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It is civilization and America on one side, anarchy and woke tyranny on the other. The Democrats thought they could ride the tiger to victory. Instead, they will be consumed by the monster they created but could not control.
And after you read the article read the comments where you will find these charts.
And let me pair the above with this, via Instapundit.
In 1996, the late great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was on stage taking questions at the Lincoln Center in New York City after the premiere of his film Through the Olive Trees, when someone asked why he had used classical music (a piece from Concerto for Oboe and Strings by Domenico Cimarosa) in a movie that was set in a small village in northern Iran? Kiarostami turned to me, his translator for the hour, and said, in his soft voice and even softer manner, “Tell him classical music has long ceased to belong to the West. It belongs to the world now.”
That exchange, the way Kiarostami disabused the audience of the notion that music knew borders or that great ideas, once invented, remained the “property” of one nation or region, was on my mind when I signed the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which ran in Harper’s Magazine last Tuesday. What I saw at the heart of the text was a defense of American democracy, which no longer belongs solely to America. For every activist on the streets of Hong Kong, every feminist in the prisons of Saudi Arabia, and every interned Uighur in China, America and its democracy remain, for better or worse, the last hope. Are they naïve and misguided? Right or wrong? It does not matter. Those who are suffering under tyrannies around the world, who are trying to imagine a different future for themselves and their fellow citizens, do not dream of Moscow, Beijing, or any nation in Europe. Just as little girls in the far corners of the world who do not even speak English want to dance like Beyoncé, and just as the youth living under prohibition in the Middle East huddle together to secretly watch bootlegged copies of Hollywood films, activists everywhere look to America, and dream of this democracy.
We’re living through the greatest mass hysteria in modern history and there are no men of reason to end it.
"What is remarkable about coronavirus is that if we are infected our chances of dying seems to mirror our chance of dying anyway over the next year". BBC. Never mind the facts – panic! shutdown!https://t.co/F7EtXsTziFpic.twitter.com/hOfwQ62wIe
It seems but only for a moment that Catallaxy has gone over to the History of Economics. And while I was contemplating all this in that little discussion on Schumpeter here and here, which had followed my own postings on Mill and MMT, this arrived in my email inbox:
The undersigned officers of the HES condemn the deaths of Black people in police custody and the systemic racism that permits political, economic, social and physical violence. We acknowledge our special responsibility, as historians of economics, to educate ourselves and others about the roles played by racism, colonialism and other forms of bias in shaping the concepts, practices, agendas and professional institutions of economists and social scientists throughout history.
The pursuit of historical knowledge leaves no room for the silencing or marginalization of any individuals or communities. Therefore, we commit ourselves to taking concrete steps to foster diversity and inclusion in our Society and its activities. We pledge to support and encourage scholarship that brings new frames of reference to the history of economics. We will listen respectfully, engage honestly and amplify the voices of those who draw our attention to the ways that biases are perpetuated in our Society and our discipline. We will build on efforts to diversify our program and awards committees and the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and we will encourage journal submissions that bring new perspectives to the past.
We commit to using our journal, conferences and other resources to further these important lines of inquiry. We will encourage critical conversations about our methods and practices that open our discipline to histories that have so far been ignored. We pledge to educate ourselves and to curate critical reading lists that support inclusive curricula, and we ask other historians of economics to make a similar commitment. We look forward to the development of richer and more comprehensive histories of economics.
Marcel Boumans, HES President plus eleven others.
I would never sign such a document, but then I am off in Australia and my career is done and dusted. But just now there is this rejoinder from Stephen Meardon, who is young, in mid-career and the immediate past editor of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought. This is truly brave:
I am sure the HES Executive Committee makes this statement with no intention of taking a side in the US culture war. But that is what it does. And it does no good for the HES.
People have been killed in the custody of US police, some of them egregiously. What the killings signify in some cases is not largely contested. In others it is. What they signify on the whole is contested very much.
Systemic racism? One can make an argument. I can see it. Why is the History of Economics Society, whose mission is to advance inquiry into the named subject, advancing this extraneous and contested argument?
We have a good thing going in our society. An uncommon thing. Scholars with different ideological, methodological, and other convictions communicate openly, learn from one another, and take pleasure in each other’s company and conversation despite their disagreements. Indeed because of them. It works because the HES does not suffer from the we- all-agree syndrome that plagues other scholarly societies and US academia at large. Which happens in good part because the HES sticks to its mission.
You and I just might have an interesting conversation about systemic racism in the United States — why you think it is the salient problem, why I think not. The kind of conversation that has been commonplace in HES coffee breaks and serendipitous hallway encounters for the couple decades and more that I’ve been involved. That conversation will be less common after the HES has decided which of us is right. Try thinking how frequently and freely you’ve heard such a conversation on any US university campus of late.
The scope of permissible conversation in US academic life is narrowing. If there is a salient social problem in the United States that relates to the mission of the HES, that’s it.
The HES has been an academic oasis where the range of values and scope of conversation is great. I hope the HES Exec. will take care in the future to preserve it.
Stephen Meardon
Bowdoin College
A brave brave statement which I could not agree with more.
I HAVE NOW WRITTEN TO THE SOCIETY TO SUPPORT STEVE MEARDON: This is what I wrote:
I would just like to add my own words of support to Stephen Meardon’s comment.
In the modern world as it now is, these are astonishingly brave words.
And Tom Cotton for VP. Watch it through. If you start, you will get to the end, and it is half an hour long.
She gets it in a way almost no one else does, other than Donald Trump. And the “it” that she gets are the principles of both political freedom and economic freedom and how these should be melded into dealing with the Covid-1984, What’s more, with her you get Donald and Melania all in a single package.
Copy to Scott Morrison, Daniel Andrews and especially Michael O’Brien (who?). O’Brien especially needs to learn the principles necessary to make the case against Dangerous Dan. As for Scott, see CL on Speak for Yourself.
The following are both about the same thing: President Trump is about to go after Antifa and their friends. No holds barred in dealing with the enemies of civilisation.
PLUS THIS: I was going to add that I thought this was the best speech Donald Trump has ever given, but thought I would see what others said first. I am not alone on this. You might have a look at this comments thread at Instapundit. These are the first four under the heading of “best”.
Trump gave them Hell tonight. I honestly have been depressed by all the COVID crap and antifa crap and the inevitablity of the enemies of freedom. Trump removed all that with a speech and I feel better. Wow, what a president.
In theory, Presidential elections are about competing visions of what America is and what America can or ought to be, as well the personalities of the candidates. Tonight at Mount Rushmore Trump made the 2020 campaign about the idea of America itself. America versus whatever the Democrats think comes after America, because they’ve made it clear they’ve rejected America. And it was the Democrat’s own rioting, pillaging, looting, iconoclastic, BLM/antifa stormtroopers that made that possible.
Well I’ll be damned! I feel a little hope!
Absolutely pitch perfect and immensely inspiring. Really gives me a boost of enthusiasm. And we are going to hear more from Kristi Noem. It’s not inconceivable that she gets elected in 2024 as our first female President.
Law of Markets 