Today, before taping The Huckabee Show, near Nashville, I visited The Hermitage, the country home of our seventh president, Andrew Jackson.
I was impressed by its austerity — though it also had somewhat pretentious Greek flourishes, which I found interesting for America’s first “populist” president.
Jackson, once a hero to Democrats, has become more controversial in recent years, such that the party dropped him from its pantheon of heroes (and Trump put his portrait in the Oval Office).
But whatever you think of Jackson as president, what I found most impresssive was his love for his wife, Rachel Donelson Jackson. She lived to see him elected, but died before he was inaugurated.
Jackson never overcame her loss. He wore a black band of mourning on his hat for the rest of his life, and never courted or married again. The epitaph on her grave, next to his in the family garden, is the most beautiful I have ever read.
I think that’s what makes a populist a populist — not a hatred of elites or a flair for incendiary rhetoric, but a deep capacity for love, starting with those closest to you, and then your community, and your country, all before the world in general.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
Tune in: SiriusXM Patriot 125, 7-10 p.m. ET / 4-7 p.m. PT
Call: 866-957-2874
This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
