It is my understanding that the vast majority of great men were, in fact, bad people.
Clearly, we ought to replace all the presidents on the money with Mahatma Gandhi.
Perhaps because you come barging into a thread, half-hysterical, screeching about ‘Indian Hater!!!’ sounding like a raving loon?
Even in bios of Hitler, people don’t sound like someone just stuck a firecracker up their ass.
As far as I know, Hitler isn’t currently on any currency or stamps or anything. Most references to him don’t include endorsements of his fuhrercy, which is why folks don’t get too up in arms decrying him. That boat has sailed. Jackson still needs taking down a peg or two in the public’s regard. Or perhaps YMMV?
So you’re saying that Jackson was not, in fact, an Indian hater? Or were you just objecting to Lib’s overuse of exclamation points? Which, you know, he hasn’t actually overused.
or jimmy carter…whatever works.
there is a lot of shades of bad. Jackson is down towards the hitler bad shade…way past anything that can just be put in the “boys will be boys” catagory.
This logic is silly. First off, ethnically cleansing 13 million people makes you a hell of a lot more evil than sort of causing the deaths of 4,000 people. Second, even judging with the standards of Hitler’s time, murdering 13 million people puts you way on the evil scale.
Anyways, Liberal’s feelings on Jackson are, unsurprisingly, just like his views on most everything else. They are the views of a college freshman when they are first exposed to ideas that don’t make it into the standard high school text books. Idealistic, naive, and dogmatic. Most people grow out of these beliefs as they gain a (greater) sense of nuance, practicality, and relativism. People that have these faculties can see Jackson for what he is. They can place themselves in the shoes of Americans at that time and see why he was considered a hero, and they can see the evil he inflicted. Neither part of that sentence changes the other part.
Ethnic Cleansing 13 million or 4000. Its still ethnic cleansing and its still evil. I’ll give you hitler is far more succesfull numbers wise.
And there is no sort of to it.
And jacksons action puts him way on the evil scale as well.
That’s all just making excuses…and it’s inexcusable. In case you havent noticed, Lib is not the only one who feels this way about jackson. i don’t agree with everything Lib says but he’s dead right in this case.
A lot of us are pissed about what happened to our ancestors. and you can try to justify and explain it away as much as you want and it’s not going to make us pretend it didn’t happen.
If you ask me, your attitude of “well, they just didn’t know any better back then,” and “the history of America is the history of well-meaning white people, whose shoes we must put ourselves in,” is naive and pre-collegiate. So I’d back off the condescending and patronizing explanation to us frosh about how the grown ups think.
Yes, that’s about the size of it. Well said.
You’re kicking the shit out of a straw man, because no one has made the statement or professed the attitude you attribute to treis.
Perspective is important. For example, it helps to know that the white squatters flooding into Cherokee land during Jackson’s presidency were for the most part as poor and desperate as the Indians they were displacing.
It helps to remember that America was still a young and tenuous democracy under threat from European powers and subject to Indian attacks on its western frontier when Jackson formed his worldview.
It helps to remember the massacre (and mutilations) of white settlers by Cherokee warriors near Knoxville, the aftermath of which Jackson had witnessed as a younger man.
It helps to remember that the Cherokee were 18,000 people spread over a territory the size of new Jersey. It helps to remember that the US could not possibly have successfully policed the borders of that territory (and the Cherokee certainly weren’t capable of it).
When evaluating Jackson’s actions in the Creek War, it helps to remember that at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Jackson gave passage and refuge to Creek women and children. Which was more than the Red Stick Creeks had done at Fort Mims. It helps to remember that, by way of contrast, the Red Sticks not only slaughtered women and children, they cut open the belly of a pregnant woman, tore out her child and left it on the ground beside her. You can sort of imagine how that might color people’s perspectives at the time.
Perspective doesn’t excuse Jackson’s actions against the Cherokee. But perspective is important.
And by “perspective,” of course you mean, “white perspective,” the shoes we need to put on our feet are certainly not moccasins. That’s what I find precollegiate and naive… and since treis himself asked us to put ourselves in the shoes of “Americans” (i.e., white Americans who hated Inidans), and you reiterate the same governing principle of how we ought to look at it, I hardly think it’s a strawman. The naive, old school history is one of well meaning whites, their stories as gentle heroes manifesting their destiny, with the Indians and the Blacks and the Chinese as interesting foils and subplots.
Of course there IS something of a strawman by supposing that those who choose to condemn Jackson are arguing for some kind of perspectiveless, unnuanced history. It certainly doesn’t bear out in the thread.
The naive new school history is one of peaceful, harmless Indians slaughtered by evil and rapacious white men.
Neither perspective is accurate.
I think that it was the reigning “story” about ten years ago in colleges and Universities, but I don’t sense it’s dominating the discussions now. It probably takes about forty years to trickle into K-12 textbooks.
Did I ever say he wasn’t?
I’m actually finding this discussion interesting enough for GD.
I have to admit, I find it refreshing when Liberal goes after Jackson. And I agree with him that he shouldn’t be on our money. I have strong negative feelings towards Jefferson, but at least he contributed something positive. Jackson isn’t really in the same league.
As far as Liberal being a “shitty historian”, maybe that’s true. But I don’t recall him ever saying he wanted to be a historian, so I’m not sure that means much. And I’m also not so sure that it’s always more respectable to look back at historical figures with a passionless, non-feeling heart.
I kind of feel the same way when it comes to Confederate history. Living here in Virginia, a couple of people have tried to “open my eyes” to “our” history–of the brave generals and soldiers who shed blood for their homeland, to preserve “our” way of life. I live off of a Monument Ave, a boulevard decorated with grandiose statutes of the “great” sons of the Confederacy (and one misfit, Arthur Ashe). In a couple of weeks, I will have a day off work to commemorate Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee (once upon a time, Jackson-and-Lee Day was celebrated–you guessed it!–on MLK Day. The irony…did it not burn?) It’s not considered polite to badmouth all of this history around me, since so many Virginians can trace their ancestors to the Confederacy. A coworker told me “We don’t honor the principals; we honor their sacrifice”, as if I should be grateful that someone died so that I might be in chains. People can sacrifice themselves for a bunch of bone-headed reasons–why should sacrifice alone be honored? But folks in Virginia are in love with their history. You can’t tell ‘em nothin’!
The “historians” don’t seem to have a problem when people celebrate (and dare I say, worship) the past, but for some reason find fault with people who hold the opposite view. I think that’s contradictary.
Liberal is a shitty historian? This from the woman who said that Czar Nicholas was a kind man? It is to laugh. You’re way over your head here, Guin.
So in other words, you are unable to demonstrate that I’ve been a shitty historian in this thread but lack the class to retract your insult.
Except that Jackson didn’t “ethnically cleanse” those 4000. He put a (bad) policy in place, that policy was carried out by his successor Van Burne (who could have demurred but refused to)and the method in which that policy was carried out led to the deaths. If any President is responsible, it’s Van Buren, nit Jackson.
And I was wrong on that account.
As I said, I’m not so much upset about Lib’s feelings on Jackson-he WAS a bastard.* It’s mostly [.
Not to mention his comments on a book he hadn’t even read, [url=http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9331309&postcount=15]saying he didn’t have to](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9329331&postcount=12).
He doesn’t have to like Jackson. No one said the guy was a great man. But we already know his feelings, and he sounds like Jackson stole his teddy bear when he was a kid.
I stand by what I posted in the OP.
*I do feel bad for his wife, though.
Guinastasia, when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging.
Tris
See, I found that post of his funny.