The Pendragon's Hall

Ann Coulter should stick to politics and legal issues...here she has a definite expertise. When she ventures into history, at least lately, she gets a little cloudy. In an interview with David Yeagley, an American Indian, on baldeagle.com, Coulter lashed out at any form of Democrat, claiming that Indians would do better in the Republican Party, and that Andrew Jackson was "a racist scumbag" who broke treaties, evicted the Cherokees, and oh by the way, was a Democrat. No attention is given to the fact that Andrew Jackson had an Indian son, and in fact, resembled conservative Republicans of today far more than any Democrat. It is true that Republicans have generally been fair to Indians--Lincoln, for example, commuted a number of unfair death sentences handed out to Indian warriors in the Minnesota Uprising during the Civil War--but you can't extrapolate the current party system back into American History. It simply is not there. Her interview in general is fairly accurate, but the anger and bitterness towards labeling anyone who was a Democrat in the past as the equiavelent of today's Left, which dates not from Jackson but from LBJ is misplaced. Her point that Federalists had a certain admiration in for Indians is not a great help...the Federalists were the Party from the Northeast where Indians had a certain distance to them. The Democrats were those who were right on the frontier interacting with them. The actual parallel might be how the bluebloods in New England, today mostly Democrats, champion sentimental Indian "rights" without ever having to deal with them. History can cut both ways and Coulter would be wise to tone it down a bit.