Conservative writer Matthew Continetti recently provided a somewhat useful, if verbose, guide to four strains of conservatism currently competing for intellectual and political power: the Jacksonians, Reformicons, Paleos, and Post-liberals. One of those strains–the Jacksonians–is of particular interest.
The group takes Andrew Jackson, whose portrait currently hangs in the Oval Office, as their avatar. (Continneti identifies himself as one.) This school of thought, Continetti writes, is “individualist, suspicious of federal power, distrustful of foreign entanglement, opposed to taxation but supportive of government spending on the middle class, devoted to the Second Amendment, desire recognition, valorize military service, and believe in the hero who shapes his own destiny.”
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