MICHAEL DORAN: The Theology Of Foreign Policy. “Historians have paid too little attention to the influence of the Jacksonian persuasion after the end of the Jacksonian era, which traditionally runs from 1828 to 1848. Following my colleague Walter Russell Mead, however, I argue that the Jacksonian persuasion has continued to influence American politics long after that date. It is still.”
Plus: “This mercurial attitude has bedeviled every president who has ever sent troops into battle. In moments marked by threats to the nation, the Jacksonian persuasion will provide the greatest reservoir of pro-interventionist sentiment imaginable. Its thirst for conflict, however, passes quickly. Once that thirst is slaked, the Jacksonian persuasion becomes a force for isolationism and, seemingly, even for pacifism. This fickleness is part of the larger paradox at the heart of the Jacksonian sensibility, namely its love-hate relationship with the federal government and chief executive. Both are vital to the survival of American liberty, which is a light unto the nations. The halo that surrounds liberty also encompasses, therefore, the military; it can widen, in certain circumstances, to encompass the presidency and the federal government as well. But the state itself is neither inherently sacred nor even good. Indeed, when federal power or executive action endangers liberty, Jacksonians can regard them as a pestilence. . . . Our latter-day Menckens have painted the religious face of Jacksonianism as mumbo jumbo, while depicting secular Jacksonians as bigots, ignoramuses, or worse. But the Progressive persuasion is every bit as religious and irrational as the Jacksonian persuasion. Its vision of history and of America’s place in it is no more scientifically verifiable than dispensational premillennialism’s belief in the Rapture. Indeed, the Progressive persuasion’s belief in the perfectibility of man defies all experience.”
