Hatin' on Old Hickory

Recently I have been trying to fill the American History gap in my expertise. Actually, gap probably isn't an accurate term especially when compared to most American adults. I find that I can only take in so much of it before becoming frustrated with the major players and/or the political spin provided by 'historians' like socialist Howard Zinn.

The more I learn about President Andrew Jackson the less I like him. Don't get me wrong here. I respect his contributions as a general and his most important victory at New Orleans which ensured that neither Britain nor France would be able to significantly slow or stop our expansion across the Mississippi. Ironically, that battle occurred after the peace treaty (to a war neither nation wanted) was signed but before news of it could cross the Atlantic.

Like any other president, Jackson had his own personal shortcomings. Personality traits that made him a good general would not serve him - or the country - well as president. He was ill-tempered and ready to 'defend his honor' against any sleight; real or perceived. He ruled like a petty dictator as president and went through cabinet members like modern Congresses go through money. In addition to two Vice Presidents (and serving for over a year without one) he burned through four Secretaries of State, three Navy Secretaries and Attorney's General, two War Secretaries, and (not surprisingly) five Treasury Secretaries.

Before he was President, Jackson and his wife also entertained some of the early nation's most inglorious bastards. James Wilkinson was a self-serving man who became an aide to Benedict Arnold and was briefly tainted by Arnold's betrayal but lack of evidence saved his skin. Wilkinson skillfully managed to reach the rank of Brigadier General without ever actually being involved in major combat. He was involved in a conspiracy to replace Washington with Horatio Gates during the Revolution. While a general in the US Army, he was employed as an agent for Spain though for the money the Spanish Crown received little in return. Wilkinson also attached himself to America's second worst traitor: Aaron Burr.

Another of Jackson's shady associates was the aforementioned Aaron Burr. Burr is most infamous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. The resulting hatred of Burr was enough for Jefferson to drop him as Vice President in his second term. Burr maintained popularity in the South where he was entertained in the Tennessee home of Andrew Jackson before and while on his campaign to create his own personal empire in the Louisiana territory and modern Texas. To Jackson's credit, lack of patriotism was not one of his failings and when Burr's machinations were discovered, Jackson repudiated Burr ever after.

It may seem silly on the face of it, but perhaps the biggest reason I dislike our seventh president is because he destroyed the financial system set up by my favorite Founder and our first Secretary of the Treasury: Alexander Hamilton (associating with Hamilton's killer does not help his case). We can debate pretty much until eternity about the merits and flaws of the Hamiltonian system and the Bank of the United States but Andrew Jackson did not care about or take time to think about that. He killed the Bank of the US solely because he hated its Federalist director. Other Democrats provided him with 'legitimate' reasons for getting rid of the Bank including potential foreign domination (unlikely) and too much concentration of wealth but those were their reasons; not his.

Shallow historians and Jacksonian apologists like to trumpet the fact that Jackson was the only president who had the US out of debt. The reality though was that because of his impetuous destruction of the Bank of the US, the nation had no mechanism with which to borrow money. After the failure of the government under the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton recognized the need for a national government that could borrow money from time to time and wisely put in place a system to do just that. He also believed that the nation should only incur debts that would be paid off by the generation that created them since it was unjust to leave those debts to future generations (Oh for any politician that exemplifies Hamilton today!). On the face of it, having no national debt sounds like a good idea but by ending the Hamiltonian system and replacing it with nothing Jackson set up the nation for periodic economic crashes and general financial instability throughout the 19th century. Jackson's successor, Martin van Buren would suffer greatly for this as a severe depression resulting from the vacuum left by the Bank of the US set in; the first of many in a boom and bust cycle that would last a century.

In the end, I suppose it is ironic that Hamilton and Jackson both appear on our currency considering one carelessly tossed aside the stable financial system created by the other. Sadly few of us know little more about these men than as the faces on the ten and twenty dollar bills. For a good introduction to American History I recommend A Patriot's History of the United States by Larry Schweikart. From Columbus to 9/11 it covers our history in a way that will dispel the lies of the left that America is basically bad.

Items of Interest

To add to Europe's woes, pilots and crews at Lufthansa - Germany's main airline - are on strike creating travel chaos on the continent. Yesterday British Airways pilots decided to strike for ten days which will not only make European travel a living Hell but will also cause worldwide travel problems. In this economy, one has to wonder how some people are unable to clearly think that having a job regardless of wages and benefits is better than the alternative. In the US there are currently six people available for every open position. If I was an out-of-work jet pilot I'd probably be giving BA or Lufthansa a call.

The death of AGW (Anthropromorohic Global Warming) is big news everywhere except in the American media. British papers and blogs are on fire and are skewering the American press for ignoring the issue. The London Telegraph, one of my major news sources, has almost daily updates on the scandal. Even the liberal UK Guardian is wise enough to place scientific honesty over political bias. But not in America where politics trumps all. The MSM is, of course, hoping to keep Americans as ignorant of this as possible in order to push the radical 'green' agenda before the general public finds out that there has been no warming since 1995, the Medieval Warm period actually was warmer, the hockey stick graph is a fraud, and most damning to the enviro-wacko movement the sea levels are not rising. They also hope to keep us in the dark just long enough to get Cap and Trade through Congress. But don't worry, the media will tell you that they aren't biased.

Speaking of Cap and Trade did you know that it was dreamed up in the offices of Enron? Had they pushed it through in the 1990s its likely we'd be paying energy costs several orders of magnitude larger than we are and fat cats under the big E would be making trillions. After Enron's collapse, certain members of the left/green movement (Algore) realized how much money they would be able to make abusing Cap and Trade for their movement and it has been co-opted by their useful idiots in the press and on the street. So the difference here really boils down to who gets to pocket the money. We need to ensure that Cap and Trade fails for the left just as it did for the unscrupulous investors at the top of Enron's pyramid.