Roundup: Historians' Take

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: What’s China Reading?

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of China’s Brave New World—and Other Tales for Global Times (2007). His commentaries have appeared in publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal Asia, Newsweek, and Lettera internazionale.] It’s fascinating to imagine what Mao Zedong (1893–1976) might make of 21st-century Nanjing, with its modernistic high-rises, colorful styles, and sprawling bustle. The

John Fea: Are Christian Conservatives “Christian” or “Conservative?”

[John Fea teaches American history at Messiah College in Grantham, PA.] A recent Rasmussen Report reveals that Mike Huckabee now has a slight lead (28%-25%) over Mitt Romney in Iowa. With only a little more than a month remaining before the Iowa caucuses, a Huckabee victory in the Hawkeye state is not out of the question. His performance recalls anot

Daniel Pipes: Turkey, Still a Western Ally?

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] "Far from being the source of anti-Americanism in Turkey, the AKP represents an ideal partner for the United States in the region." So asserts Joshua W. Walker, a former Turkey desk officer at the State Department no

Tom Engelhardt: Iraq as a Pentagon Construction Site

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.] The title of the agreement, signed by Presid

Peter Watson: Our priorities in the West are wrong. Secularism is what we should be spreading across the globe

[Peter Watson is the author of A Terrible Beauty: The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind, and Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud.] If Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher, was not incarcerated somewhere in Sudan, the whole Teddy Bear called Mohamed incident would be comical. But it serves to remind us once again that fundamentalist religion and Western values do not sit together. And it rubs in that we should spend more time promoting secularism around the world and

Eric Rauchway: The Supreme Court needs to do a better job of protecting the Constitution. Here's how we could force them to.

[Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author, most recently, of Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America and Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America.] We're living in a slow-motion constitutional crisis. The key questions of whether the president can torture people, declare a U.S. citizen an enemy combatant and remove him from the ordinary court system, or reinterpret law at the time of signing legisl

Mitchell Bard: The Palestinians ... Sixty Years of Missed Chances

[Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and has been published in academic journals, magazines, and major newspapers.] On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to create a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine. Soon Israel will celebrate its 60th birthday and the Palestinians could be having one of their own if t

Juan Cole: Why Bush's troop surge won't save Iraq

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia gave some needed perspective on the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq. Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, recently returned from a visit to Iraq. He said that it was inacc

Stanley Kutler: The Religion of Mike Huckabee

[Stanley Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate.] Religion promises to be a major issue in the long campaign of 2008. At the moment, it simmers just beneath the surface, but make no mistake, it is there. Mitt Romney's Mormon affiliation now commands the most attention. Romney has repeatedly affirmed his commitment to his faith and his church -- his family has long been part of the establishment of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. As Republicans do, he has vigorou

Michael B. Oren: Did Annapolis amount to anything?

[Michael B. Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and a visiting senior lecturer in Middle East history at Yale, is the author of “Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.”] LAST week’s multi-national summit meeting here was about many things, the least of which, perhaps, was the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Behind the calls for the creation of a Palestinian state that would live serenely and stably alongside the Jewish st

Jonathan Zimmerman: Scrutinize candidates evenly

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University.] Let's imagine that Mitt Romney released a television advertisement in Iowa describing himself as "a Mormon leader." Reporters would descend like vultures upon Romney, the front-running Republican in the Iowa presidential caucuses, asking if he embraced Mormon doctrine on marriage, alcohol and everything else. So why isn't anyone questioning Mike Huckabee about Timothy LaHaye?

Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom: Are historically black colleges good for blacks?

[Ms. Thernstrom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Mr. Thernstrom is a professor of history at Harvard University.] Fisk University is in such dire financial straits that it is considering selling off part of its valuable art collection. The Nashville, Tenn., school is one of the nation's 103 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and its money problems raise an obvious question: Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, should we still support an

Daniel Pipes: Accept Israel as the Jewish State?

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Surprisingly, something useful has emerged from the combination of the misconceived Annapolis meeting and a weak Israeli prime minister, Ehud ("Peace is achieved through concessions") Olmert. Breaking with his predecessors, Olmert has boldly demanded that his Pales

William Schweiker: Baptism by Torture (The roots of waterboarding)

Religious practices have often been tied to violence and torture, but this connection is often hidden within public discourse. That is the situation now in the United States with the debate about waterboarding, the religious meanings of which have yet to be articulated and explored.

Juan Cole: McCain blames Rise of Hitler on Ron Paul

In a new low of despicable looniness, at the Republican debate in St. Petersburg, John McCain equated those Americans who want to stop militarily occupying Iraq with Hitler-enablers. He actually said that, saying that it was 'isolationism' of a sort that allowed Hitler to come to power. It gives a person a certain amount of faith in one's fellow Americans that McCain was booed by the Republican crowd for this piece of calumny. Comparisons to Hitler should be automatic grounds for a

David P. Redlawsk: The Iowa Caucuses Aren't THAT Complicated

[David P. Redlawsk is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa and Director of the University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll. ] As we get closer to the Iowa Caucuses, the volume here in Iowa continues to grow. Candidates all over the place, complaints about attacks, polls showing dead heats, and so on, are making things interesting. None of that, however, is much different from the last time around, or the time before that, etc… What is different, at lea

Scott Horton and David T. Beito: Why Ron Paul Is Right About Terrorism ... A Letter to the GOP Base

[David T. Beito [send him mail] is a member of the Liberty and Power group blog at the History News Network and Scott Horton [send him mail] is assistant editor at Antiwar.com, hosts Antiwar Radio in Austin, Texas and runs the blog Str

Cass Sunstein: An Historical Analysis Of The Second Amendment

In 1991, Warren E. Burger, the conservative chief justice of the Supreme Court, was interviewed on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour about the meaning of the Second Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms." Burger answered that the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud-- I repeat the word 'fraud'--on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime." In a speech in 1992, Burger declared that "the Secon

Max Hastings: The Oxford Union was after easy publicity when it invited David Irving and Nick Griffin - but the debate can do no harm

[Max Hastings is a British military historian.] On the Richter scale of notoriety, Harold Davidson, rector of Stiffkey, still rates near the top. Having been defrocked in 1932 for conducting a sex life exotic even by modern Church of England standards, he resorted to increasingly desperate methods to retain the attention to which he had become addicted. His final gambit, in 1937, was to appear in a cage of lions at an amusement park in Skegness. One of the beasts, named Freddie, too

Katherine Ashenburg: We used to be more concerned with hand-washing than body-washing

[Katherine Ashenburg is the author, most recently, of “The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History.”] IT’S hard to see Americans as under-washed. Sales of antibacterial soap, tooth whiteners and “intimate hygiene” products (wipes and sprays) are skyrocketing. Scientists actually connect the rising rates of asthma and allergies in the West to our overzealous cleanliness. And yet, in a compulsively sanitized culture, cleaning one part of the body — the hands — seems to be more honored i