Roundup: Historians' Take

Howard Zinn: Are We Politicians or Citizens?

As I write this, Congress is debating timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. In response to the Bush Administration's "surge" of troops, and the Republicans' refusal to limit our occupation, the Democrats are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months. And it seems they expect the anti-war movement to support them. That was suggested in a recent message from MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat pro

Susan Jacoby: Are the Religious Discriminated Against?

[Susan Jacoby is the author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.] "Does discrimination against Catholics still exist in this country today?" was a recent question posed in "On Faith," a blog published by the Washington Post and Newsweek. The responses were extraordinarily revealing -- not about anti-

Tom Engelhardt: Outsourcing Action in an Imperial World

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.] Excuse me

Sheri Berman: No economic model fits all countries all the time

[Sheri Berman, who teaches political science at Barnard College, is the author of “The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century.”] Postwar European history falls neatly into two periods. From 1945 to 1973, the countries of Western Europe recovered rapidly from the almost unimaginable devastation caused by World War II and then took off, growing faster than the United States and more than twice as fast as their own historical trends. From 197

Carolyn Eisenberg: Congress is sorely lacking in courage

[Carolyn Eisenberg is a professor of U.S. foreign policy at Hofstra University and the author of a book on the American occupation of Germany.] It is now confirmed that the Bush administration is adding 30,000 troops to the U.S. forces already in Iraq. This might surprise voters, who in November clearly rejected the White House approach. But, while the president openly defies public opinion, the Democratic Congress is unwilling to exercise its constitutional right to st

Stanley I. Kutler: Congressional culpability in the US attorney mess

[Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate.]Congress is on the verge of rare bi-partisanship: the administration's calculated decision to rid its ranks of "disloyal" U.S. attorneys, who did their duty to enforce the law without political fear or favor, has roiled the blood of Democrats and Republicans alike. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's days appear numbered; at the very least, his authority is severely diminished. Karl Rove, the architect of many Democratic de

Steven Pinker: A History of Violence (We're getting nicer every day)

[Steven Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor at Harvard University. His latest book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature, will be published by Viking this year. ] In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with

Rick Perlstein: FNB Politics

Faggot. Nigger. Bitch. Please excuse the blunt language. From here forward, to avoid the ugly words, I'll refer to it as "FNB politics." With little to show the electorate in 2008--after six years of uninterrupted control--besides sub-standard care from a privatized workforce at Walter Reed Hospital, thrice-married "family values" presidential candidates, and a boom in home foreclosures, the conservative base's 2008 strategy has begun to emerge: Weaken th

Cornel West: What It Means to Be a Leftist in the 21st Century

What does it really mean to be a leftist in the early part of the 21st century? What are we really talking about? And I can just be very candid with you. It means to have a certain kind of temperament, to make certain kinds of political and ethical choices, and to exercise certain analytical focuses in targeting on the catastrophic and the monstrous, the scandalous, the traumatic, that are often hidden and concealed in the deodorized and manicured discourses of the mainstream. That's what

Jonathan Zimmerman: In the Supreme Court case over 'Bong hits 4 Jesus,' both sides are wrong

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University.] Can a high school student display a banner that says "Bong Hits 4 Jesus"? That's the question the Supreme Court debated this week in a case pitting the free-speech rights of the student against the duty of his school to warn against the dangers of drugs. But in this case, both sides are wrong. The banner was a foolish vulgarity, unworthy of court-affirmed protection for politically mean

Harold C. Relyea and Jay R. Shampansky: Presidential Advisers’ Testimony Before Congressional Committees: An Overview (Congressional Research Service)

[Harold C. Relyea is a Specialist in American National Government Government and Finance Division. Jay R. Shampansky is Legislative Attorney American Law Division.] Summary Since the beginning of the federal government, Presidents have called upon executive branch officials to provide them with advice regarding matters of policy and administration. While Cabinet members were among the first to play such a role, the creation of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) in 1

Juan Cole: Bush's Top 10 Mistakes in Iraq in the Last 4 Years

10. Refusing to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when his incompetence and maliciousness became apparent in the growing guerrilla war and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. 9. Declining to intervene in the collapsed economy or help put Iraqi state industries back on a good footing, on the grounds that the "market" would magically produce prosperity effortlessly. 8. Invading and destroying the Sunni Arab city of Fallujah in November, 2004, thus pushing th

Ruth Rosen: Who should own our water?

[Ruth Rosen is Professor Emerita of History, U.C. Davis.] Is water a human right or a commodity to be marketed for profit? Should water be run by local governments or by distant corporations in order to make a profit? Why do we pay more for a six-pack of bottled water than for a gallon of gasoline? These are some of the tough-minded questions Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman first asked in their provocative and memorable 2004 documentary, also titled "Thirst." In th

Gabriel Kolko: Israel's Last Chance

[Gabriel Kolko is the author of Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War?, and Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience.] The United States has given Israel $51.3 billion in military grants since 1949, most of it after 1974 – more than any other country in the post-1945 era. Israel has also received $11.2 billion in loans for military equipment, plus $31 billion in economic grants, not to mention loa

Andrew Meyer: Should We Be Worried About China's Growing Military Power?

[After living in mainland China and Taiwan for four years and in Japan for one year Andrew Meyer returned to the U.S. and earned a doctoral degree in Chinese history, which he teaches at the City University of New York.] Speaking in Sydney, Australia o

Jim Sleeper: Why Rudy Really Shouldn't be President

[Mr. Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, holds a doctorate in education from Harvard and was a Shorenstein Center fellow there in 1998.] The deluge of commentary on Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential prospects has forced me finally to break my long silence about the man. Somebody’s gotta say it: He shouldn’t be president, not because he’s too “liberal” or “conservative,” or because his positions on social issues have been heterodox, or because he seems tone-deaf on race, or beca

Ruth Rosen: Berkeley Blues

The young man in change of checking people’s identification cards as you enter the University of California, Berkeley library noticed my faculty card. He stopped me. “Say professor,” he said, “could I ask you a question?” I looked at his serious face. His eyes were deep brown, his skin even darker. His smile was warm and appealing. “Sure,” I answered, knowing that I was early for a two-hour library class to teach my students how to do electronic research. “Do you think

Mark Roodhouse: Historical experience supports carbon rationing

[The writer lectures in 20th century British history at the University of York. ] Labour’s call will once more be “fair shares for all” if David Miliband has anything to do with it. The current climate crisis gives the Labour party – never comfortable with the politics of post- war affluence – the opportunity to return to the politics of austerity. The environment secretary’s plans to reduce carbon emissions by expanding existing carbon trading schemes and introducing an individual

Tom Engelhardt: A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder… and no one notices

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.] Let me see

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen: The Humiliation Myth ... Humiliation doesn’t explain terrorism; the spread of Political Islam does.

[Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. He is writing a book on genocide in our time to be published in 2008.] As Peter Bergen and Michael Lind ably demonstrate in their recent article ["A Matter of Pride," Issue #3], the notion that poverty causes terrorism–and that, absent poverty, terrorism would diminish radically–is a fallacy. Indeed, the "myth of deprivation" is so manifestly inadequate tha