“Andrew Jackson was a military hero and genius and a beloved President. But he was also a flawed and imperfect man, a product of his time. It is the duty of each generation to carry on the fight for justice. My administration will work night and day to ensure that the sacred rights which God has bestowed on His children are protected for each and every one of you, for each and every American. We must all remember Jackson’s words: that in ‘the planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer,’ we will find the muscle and bone of our country. So true. So true.”
From President Donald Trump’s Remarks on the 250th Anniversary of the Birth of Andrew Jackson, March 15, 2017, at the Hermitage, President Jackson’s plantation home in Tennessee.
The Yellow Brick Road of American Politics
Supposedly, the “End of History” occurred somewhere around 1991 when the Soviet Union fell. It was then that Western liberalism finally and peacefully crushed Marxist autocracy. Strangely, both Western Christianity and Marxism helped create the modern idea of “progress,” sharing a linear view of time, space, and truth. Granted, Christianity recognizes faith in the supernatural, as well as materialism, but both believe history bends toward justice and an eschaton.
Regardless of what one believes about progress, we need a standard by which to judge whether progress is occurring. As Dorothy of Oz discovers over and over again, “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” This post suggests that the two competing worldviews in America today are the Classical Judeo-Christian (CJC) worldview and the Marxist worldview. It also argues that the election of Donald Trump in 2024 will set the course of American politics for the remainder of the 21st century: CJC in America has won.
We are not experiencing a culture war, but a worldview war. These two extremes can overlap, but, at the end of the day, they are not compatible.
A couple of caveats before we proceed. First, my observations have nothing to do with whether you or I like or dislike President Trump as a person, leader, or political/moral force. I’m trying to remain agnostic out of my own worldview on these issues, though I voted for DJT twice. To me, most American presidential elections present binary choices. If you want your vote to count, you must pick one or the other. Sometimes it’s close, and sometimes it’s not. To me, the choices were easy in 2016 and 2024, though I would have chosen almost any other GOP candidate over Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris. To me, the choice over Kamala was easier than the choice over Hillary.
Second, history never ends. The idea of “an end to history” is an absurd notion. It’s useful mostly as a metaphor or qualifier in thinking about the future from a worldview point of view, especially in the context of political and global conflict.
This brings me to a third and perhaps most significant point: the 2024 Presidential Election just might be the End of History in American politics if there was such a thing as stasis in history and if it wasn’t for other factors mentioned here in the end. Americans want limited not totalitarian government. Because of near and present opportunities/dangers, however, the world America faces is more uncertain than any time in my life. I believe these primarily technological forces could dwarf any other influences manifested so far in “modern” times.
The Democrat Party
Finding the true beginning of any political idea is tough. Nonetheless, American historians agree that the Democrat Party inadvertently began as soon as George Washington left the political scene (1731 – 1799), as the Federalist versus Anti-Federalist alliances were ending, and as Thomas Jefferson’s star ascended. The irony is that Jefferson was a strange anti-elitist who respected the masses but also greatly feared them. The name of his “Democratic-Republican” Party reflected this irony, which resolved itself in the 1828 election of Andrew Jackson. (See Harry Watson’s book Liberty and Power.) Jackson’s election set the course of American politics all the way to today.
His party became the Democratic Party and his 1828 opponent’s party (John Quincy Adams, John Adam’s son) became the National Republican Party. Jackson’s Democrat Party is the same one we have today. In contrast, Adam’s party became the Whig Party, which morphed into the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln (originally a Whig). From there you can fast forward to today on the GOP side, noting that there have been many attempts to create third parties as Elon Musk is attempting to do now. So far, all of those attempts have failed. (As an aside, there are political analysts who believe that the Constitution makes a two-party system inevitable in America, differing from parliamentary systems that clearly foster more parties.)
A second political irony concerning beginnings is that, just as Marx inverted Hegel’s idealism, the decidedly unacademic DJT has stood the great “populist” Andrew Jackson on his head. He may have completed the task of flipping “We the People” to the Republican Party. My bet that we’re in a Third Wave (see below) depends on this being right. Of course, almost no Democrats are willing yet to believe they have lost the average American person. Furthermore, I am certainly not arguing here that the Democrat Party will not do well in 2026, 2028, or anytime in the future for that matter. Again, really, history is never over until we or God say it is.
However, the Democrat Party is in a self-admitted state of disarray right now perhaps not seen since the Reagan Electoral College landslide of 1984. Karl Rove explains the situation succinctly here.
What’s going on? Who knows, but you can start with Victor Davis Hanson’s analysis (see the link). Now, if you want a more dispassionate take from a Democrat who does not think the sky is falling (while recognizing that change in the DP is necessary), try Michael Tomasky, Editor of The New Republic, in this podcast hosted by Henry Olsen at the EPPC, What’s Left for the Left?
Much like David Brat’s primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014 in Virginia signaled the coming of Donald Trump on the national stage (in a John the Baptist way to MAGA supporters), I believe Zohran Mamdani’s defeat of Governor Andrew Cuomo signals the end of the Democrat Party as we know it long-term, unless they drastically moderate their platform (as did President Clinton for the DP in the 1990’s).
Why? Because Mamdani represents political forces running directly counter to what the American people will support consistently in the foreseeable future.
Just for starters, what they will support includes: (1) a pro-United States of America position under a rule of law as defined by the Constitution, as amended and interpreted. This requires a strong military and police force and strong law enforcement. Mamdani is a Marxist sympathetic to radical change and Islam; a parallel on the Christian side might be any politician supporting Christian liberation theology; (2) a whole host of anti-autocratic, anti-large government, and anti-elitist dispositions and solutions. Central government must trend smaller. Mamdani is a totalizing socialist-to-Communist; enough said there. (3) a pro-CJC worldview where the citizen and his/her family precedes any government in a private sector where private property with no glass ceiling exists and ones biological sex matters. Again, Mamdani is a Bernie-like socialist with a strong commitment to LGBTQ rights (an incoherent amalgam of interests if there ever was one, though somehow it’s still holding together). But men in women’s sports? What a loser of an issue.
If American Marxists, Islamists, and Postmodernists were to eliminate the GOP in an alliance of the enemies of an enemy, they’d find themselves in a political death struggle over supremacy (with the qualifier that many postmodernists don’t believe in anything enough to do anything).
Make no mistake, Zohran Mamdani is a young, “attractive” candidate (even younger than Dave Brat when he ran the first time).
No matter, the American people have wised up to stealth candidates and political solutions, which they had not wised up to fully by Ronald Reagan’s day. A stealth candidate is one who will say anything to get elected, then tack to his/her core political positions after winning. (Trump sincerely attempts to deliver on his promises, like them or hate them. An unusual political trait today We the People appreciate.) Such candidates do not deliver on centrist promises unless forced to do so. We saw this on the DP side in President Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. We see similar politicians in Mamdani and AOC.
Other than outlining just above what majority America will support in the future, the other key theme in this post is that the laboratory experiment of attempted big government political solutions has run its course, not only in the U.S. but globally. This had not occurred by Reagan’s day or the first End of History in 1991. Indeed, President Clinton’s claim that the big government era is over might just be true, or at least the era of much bigger government. Now we do really need to stop growing DC and balance the budget. The American people want a balanced budget and reduced national debt by a vast majority. (A Constitutional amendment is needed.)
In spite of Trump’s current MSM popularity polls putting him below 50%, I believe a 60 to 70% majority of regular Americans (non-elitists) support the DJT emphasis on limiting and cutting back Washington—and this is not good news for the DP.
In other words, by now, most American “commoners” or ordinary persons know that almost none of the solutions Democrats offer through bigger government actually work—however well-intended.
And this brings us back to We the People, Andrew Jackson, and Donald Trump.
Old Hickory is Back
Recognizing that the 2024 presidential election was much closer than usually portrayed on the GOP side, Jonathan Haidt predicted Trump’s win in our PC video clip at top in early 2024. If you want elaboration on a smattering of themes the American people will support in future elections already mentioned above, see the playlist linked here.
In any case, Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump share important similarities (with equally great dissimilarities) that will get much ink from professional historians well into the future. The MSM started calling Trump a populist in a derogatory way during the 2016 campaign. While that manifestation said more about the elitist media itself than Trump, it proved 100% correct and hence the DP’s problem today. We recently highlighted a new book Spellbound by Molly Worthen. It examines the relationship between leaders and followers in American history and addresses the MAGA movement in the end.
Like Andrew Jackson, Donald Trump is all about the American people themselves. He gets votes by going straight to the people every time. In doing so, he leaves elitists on both sides of the political aisle suffering from reputational political loss, while wallowing in a whiny “not invented here” syndrome.
Indeed, Trump has delivered more in his first seven months of office in his second term alone than any president’s full term in my lifetime. I call this the Revenge of the Bourgeoisie.
What that means is the middle and upper middle class have been dissed by elitist American intellectuals since the 1800s, and Trump has shown what a skilled businessman can accomplish when he knows the political landscape and has the time to assemble a talented team dedicated to accomplishing specific political objectives.
No one agrees with everything any politician does, and all politicians will fail in a spectacular way if they stay in office long enough—that’s the nature of politics. But even Trump’s detractors are recognizing they face one of the most formidable political forces over the last 100 years that’s leading trends throughout the West and beyond. If Trump Derangement Syndrome is all you’ve got, your candidacy will fail except in the most strident districts.
The Donald is constantly criticized by Republicans as well as Democrats for over-promising, over-selling, exaggeration, hypocrisy, narcissism, very mean-spirited name-calling, self-dealing, immorality, and even lying. I suspect that when he read the speech quoted above in 2017, he knew when he described Andrew Jackson as a “flawed and imperfect man,” that he was most certainly talking about himself, too.
The problem for his critics is We the People understand him and what he is saying when he says it. Furthermore, they see him as a man who respects and loves America and the Constitution. Most certainly, they do not see him as a fascist or Nazi. The more his opposition harp on these themes, the more they lose. To the average American, Trump is like your competent and eccentric uncle: you don’t take his words literally, and, again, you know what he’s saying. Yes, we shall all “see what happens” together as a hopefully greater country.
Furthermore, the People can laugh at and with him. The graphic below superimposes the President’s face over a political cartoon drawn by Andrew Jackson’s critics to paste him as a tyrant. They said King Andrew didn’t respect the Constitution nor honor the big government trends of his day. (The word “progressive” did not surface until the 1890s.)
Today, comedians are saying if Trump had been president in 1860 (see “Had I Been Consulted” above), America would have avoided the Civil War, ended slavery, and achieved world peace in just the few months before First Bull Run.
Yes, Jackson and Trump are extremely head-strong—perhaps the understatement of the century—but they had and have a sense for what the People want. They have and had tremendous respect for the average person’s judgement, work ethic, and moral fiber. Today, a majority of American people know that Trump believes just as much in the “muscle and bone” as Old Hickory did.
What are the primary differences between Andrew Jackson’s day and our times?
Andrew Jackson’s perceived foreign enemies were still other European countries (Great Britain, France, and Spain). Its perceived internal enemies were uncooperative American Indian tribes, the moral catastrophe of slavery, and the still early stage but significant contradictions of “capitalism.” Today, our foreign enemies involve either an ideology (Communism) or a method of Mafia-like rule (Russia), both common worldwide among leftist autocracies, and fundamentalist Islam.
The problem with America today versus after World War II or even Ronald Reagan’s era is that all of these influences have moved inside the USA, and that’s what the candidacy of Mamdani represents.
The Third Wave of American History
Whether we like it or not, King Donald is the surfer who has gotten America up on the third great democratic wave of American history since 1776, just in time for our 250th Anniversary. He has totally flipped the surfboard of “We the People” on Andrew Jackson’s DP.
Any country that begins its constitution with the phrase “We the People” using majority rule as the political default makes inevitable that something like Jacksonian Democracy would occur. That was the First Great Wave after the American Revolution.
The Second Great Wave was the long rule of Franklin Roosevelt, where We the People decided after the Depression they wanted to give larger government and “progress” a chance. All Americans today are resolved that we don’t want to go back to a time with poor starving in the streets (however free), widows and orphans without any means, and the elderly homeless.
But the Third Wave that the Donald has ushered in is that America henceforth will apply a Classical Judeo-Christian ethic to measure progress, that all the experiments of big government have been tried not only in America but the world since the late 1800’s have failed in significant ways (given our standard of progress) and are producing diminishing returns, and that we must place the interests of our own citizens first for the good of the entire world. No country or empire can survive that forgets that last principle.
Clearly, America seeks strong gods now; the solutions beyond the Constitution’s liberalism will involve a return to orthodoxy something like this; and it won’t be via a “faithful presence” supposedly comfortable to culture-dominating elitists. “Intellectuals can be populist.” (R.I.P. Chuck Colson. My guess: you were correct.)
In sum, we have a much better idea of what government can do well and what it cannot do well than anyone could have known in modern times prior to now. Our Big Government spending is not sustainable. Increasing debt always crushes State, organizational, family, and individual victims in the fullness of time. Overall, America must fall back on the principle of subsidiary which made us great, or the nation, as we know it, will perish.
Of course, there will be more ups and downs and more political victories to go around for everyone.
But the definition of “progress” as accepted even under George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s eras is being revised. What is to the left and to the right has lost meaning. The ideas of “liberal versus conservative” have lost traction. We the People seem to have totally flipped parties since Jackson’s day, completing the near-term trend begun under Reagan.
America’s problems at least 50 years in the making are obvious to most Americans today, as are most of the possible solutions. If your political party does not occupy these solutions, the American majority will not endorse it in the voting booth. (There will always be regional or local exceptions, sometimes based on personality, not policy.) The DP occupies this space now.
America does not want a revolution, it wants the U.S. Constitution. This is a matter of common sense and practical wisdom, undergirded by Christian virtue. God is the patient father and just judge, and only He will decide what stages of history lie before us.
And We the People? The comic below depicts the party in the White House after President Jackson’s inauguration in March 1829, a legendary barn-burner.
It’s been approximately eight generations since Andrew Jackson. We have benefited from the Three Waves of political “Aha movements” described above.
And the People aren’t your average dirt-farming, monkey-trying, tongues-speaking rubes either, though they still like a little grog after 5:00 every now and again. Most have high school diplomas or college/graduate degrees and instant access to any information they might want. We are actually considering seriously the question, “Who needs a college degree?”
Yes, men still chase women and dogs still chase cats, as illustrated above. But we have a lot more evidence from history than we had in 1800, and we’re learning from our own American practical experience, as well as from observing what has succeeded or failed in other countries. Freedom is still an essential good, but it needs all kinds of qualifications.
Now, what will happen in the Age of AI, drones, and expanding nuclear technology, we have no clue. Technology alone makes the future a jump ball, and it’s likely unstoppable. The innovations right before our eyes will make the printing press, electric light, and automobile resemble child’s play. In my opinion the Far Left showed its violent hand during the Summer of 2020, and to date, the generally law-abiding majority has not done so. Yet, the global situation is more dangerous than it’s ever been, and the forces we see now will take us through the rest of the century.
To conclude, we hope that history is not over for the best of reasons, and that progress via We the People under CJC virtues will march on. In America, the People will lead, resist, and attempt to control the fates. Presidents Jackson and Trump saw this coming, and, in my opinion and given my worldview, the U.S. is better off for their brave and visionary leadership. Also, I hope America will continue adopting common sense solutions and avoid the catastrophic internal violence that followed Jacksonian Democracy approximately 30 years later.
