http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/25/rediscovering-the-virtues-of-andrew-jackson/
Few Americans in the country’s history have received the polarized interpretations that President Andrew Jackson has. Once revered as the quintessential frontier hero, a statesman who saved rugged individualism from the corrupt forces of corporatists and government centralizers, Jackson has more recently been maligned as a brutal white supremacist who epitomized white, capitalist, and Southern bigotry in the 19th century.
On this point, there is an unlikely alliance between some conservatives and Marxists. Dinesh D’Souza attacks Jackson as an early “progressive Democrat” who ushered in the Democratic Party’s legacy of genocide. The neo-Marxist Howard Zinn, similarly, scorns him as a “slave owner,” a “killer of Indians,” and “the architect of the Trail of Tears.” Adding to the confusion, Jackson has been appropriated by rather unlikely allies, such as the government centralizers of the New Deal era, who argued that Jackson anticipated the New Deal’s concentration of power in the hands of the presidency for the purpose of fulfilling the will of the majority.
Against the facile misinterpretations and half-truths touted both by friends and foes of President Jackson, Bradley Birzer’s In Defense of Andrew Jackson offers a thoughtful, refreshing, and timely analysis of our hopelessly misunderstood seventh president. Birzer, a historian at Hillsdale College, paints a vivid portrait of Jackson as both a man and as a statesman.
He should be perceived, Birzer demonstrates, not as the ancestor of majoritarian New Deal democracy but as a principled defender of traditional American republicanism. Eloquently written and amply supported by historical evidence, In Defense of Andrew Jackson serves as a sorely needed reminder of the republican principles that inspired so many Americans in the 19th century—principles that Americans need desperately.
