Roundup: Historians' Take

Simon Winchester: The Significance of This Year's Series of Natural Disasters

Simon Winchester, in the NYT (12-29-04):[Simon Winchester is the author of "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883."]...As every American schoolchild knows, the most notorious rupture of this same fault occurred nearly a century ago, at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906 - an occurrence now known around the world as the great San Franci

Howard Zinn: Why It's Possible to Remain an Optimist

Howard Zinn, at commondreams.org (Nov. 8, 2004): [From: The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. Parts of this essay appeared in You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train and Howard Zinn on History.]

Ross K. Baker: Religion Always Divides Americans When It Becomes the Subject of Politics

by Ross K. Baker

Ross K. Baker, in USA Today (12-27-04): [Ross K. Baker is a political science professor at Rutgers University. He also is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.] Gen. George Marshall, who served as Army chief of staff during World War II and later as secretary of State, was once asked which political party he favored. He replied, "My father was a Democrat, my mother was a Republican, and I am an Episcopalian." Marshall's wry response underscores the f

Stanley I. Kutler: A Shocking Poll Reveals that the Internment of Muslims Would Win Support from Millions

Stanley I. Kutler, at Salon.com (12-24-04): Will our history be a usable past, or are we destined to fall victim to George Santayana's famous admonition that those who forget the past are condemned to relive it? A recent Cornell University poll found that 44 percent of Americans believe the government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslims. Only a slighter higher percentage of 48 percent believe there should be no such restrictions. And nearly 30 percent respon

Michael Lind: The Effect of New England's Take-Over of the Democratic Party

Michael Lind, in the American Prospect (1-4-05): Is the Democratic Party becoming the New England party? In 2004, the candidates who dominated the Democratic presidential primaries, beginning with the one in New Hampshire, were Howard Dean of Vermont and John Kerry of Massachusetts. In 2004, as in 1988, the Democrats nominated a liberal Massachusetts politician to run against a conservative

Bruce Thornton: Frank Rich's Litany of Liberal Myths

Bruce Thornton, at the website of Victor Davis hanson (12-19-04): [Bruce Thornton is a professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno and author of Bonfire of the Humanities (ISI Books) and Greek Ways (Encounter). ] If you want a good guide to the pathologies of the liberal mind, look no farther than Frank Rich's weekly column in the Sunday New York Times. In everything he writes, Rich combines an arrogant pret

Stanley Kutler: Kerik Was Bush's Man--So He Was Rewarded

Stanley Kutler, in the Chicago Tribune (12-21-04):The scandal of a public life, and not the substance of its shining moments, too often dominates public conversation about our nation's highest political figures, an inevitable byproduct of our cult of celebrity. Now comes Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, disciple

David Day: Because Countries Don't Like to Admit Defeat, They Often Keep Fighting Long After Looming Defeat Is Obvious

David Day, in the Australian (12-22-04):[David Day, an honorary associate of the history program at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, is author of Conquest: A New History of the Modern World (forthcoming, HarperCollins).] If history is any guide, it will take many more lives than the nearly 1 per cent of the population who have been killed since the toppling of

Robert D. Kaplan: How to Assess What's Happening in the Middle East

Trudy Kuehner, summarizing a talk Robert D. Kaplan gave to the Foreign Policy Research Institute's two-day History Institute for Teachers on the Middle East, which was held October 16-17, 2004:[Robert D. Kaplan is contributing editor to the Atlantic Monthly and a long-time FPRI Associate. His books include Warrior Politics (2001); Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus (2000); Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warrior

Nick Turse: Giving the Gift of War ... Merry Pentagon Christmas

Nick Turse, at TomDispatch.com (12-12-04):[Nick Turse is doctoral candidate at the Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He writes for the Village Voice and regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-corporate complex.]It's that time of year again, folks. The moment to begin the mad scramble to fill those Xmas sto

Rick Perlstein: What the Democrats Should Do (And Shouldn't)

Rick Perlstein, in the American Prospect (12-6-04): ... The most indelible lesson I’ve learned this year consulting with apostates from southern evangelical culture is that we have deeply underestimated the organicist, hierarchical, mystical, and -- God knows -- hypocritical elements in its makeup. (The divorce rate in Mississippi is higher than that in Massachusetts, a point that can&

Alan Brinkley: What the Democrats Have to Do Now

Alan Brinkley, in the American Prospect (12-6-04): The most sobering fact about the 2004 election is that Democrats did not profit from the significant rise in voter turnout. It has long been an article of faith among Democrats that increasing the turnout would help their candidate. But that was not the case this year. Bush drew 9 million more voters than he received in 2000, an 18-percent increase, far overshad

Susanne Urban: Anti-Semitism in Germany Today

Susanne Urban, in Jewish Political Studies Review (Fall 2004): The new millennium has witnessed a resurgence of anti-Semitism in the world, especially in Europe. Anti-Semitism certainly did not disappear in Germany after WW II. What is new is the blunt expression of anti-Semitism and the fraternization between left-wing and right-wing, liberal and conservative streams. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism continue to spread in German society and are more and more openly expressed.R

Tracy Campbell: No One Should Be Surprised About Allegations of Stolen Elections in the US

Tracy Campbell, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (12-10-04): [Tracy Campbell is an associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky and author of Short of the Glory: The Fall and Redemption of Edward F. Prichard Jr. (University Press of Kentucky, 1998). His book on the history of American election fraud will be published next year by Carroll & Graf.] ... In early 2004, af

Eric Foner: Rarely Has an Election Left Progressives in Such Despair

Eric Foner, in the Nation (12-20-04)RARELY HAS A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION produced such widespread despair on the left. By any objective standard, George W. Bush has been among the worst Presidents in American history. One of the main purposes of elections in a democracy is to act as a check on those in power by confronting them with the possibility of being removed from office. If Bush c

Tony Judt: The Problem Ukraine Poses for Europe

Tony Judt, in the NYT (12-5-04):[Tony Judt is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University.]THE election crisis unfolding in Ukraine is a foretaste of the problems the European Union will confront in coming decades at its eastern edge. To be sure, what is being played out in Kiev has little to do with the West. Ukraine's democratic revolution was delayed

Juan Cole: Why Charles Krauthammer Is Wrong About Iraqi Elections

Juan Cole, at his blog (11-28-04):Charles Krauthammer, after 18 months of blithe optimism on Iraq, has now suddenly decided that the country is embroiled in a Civil War and that the forthcoming elections will resemble those of 1864 in the United States, when the Confederate states did not vote for Lincoln. As usual, Krauthammer is wrong. Historical analogies are always tricky, but this one is simply ina

Juan Cole: Just How Many Insurgencies Has the West Succeeded in Putting Down?

Juan Cole, at his blog (12-2-04): John Yaukey of Gannett has a good analysis of the Sunni Arab problem in Iraq and how it affects the elections. Read all the way to the end, where he compares American Iraq to French Algeria: "One sobering lesson from the past, however, is that well-armed insurgents have rarely ever lost. The French fought Islamic insurgents for eight years in an attempt to hold on to Algeria. In 1959, it appeared the French army had suppres

Andrew Johnston: Canadians Should Beware Bush's Olive Branch

Andrew Johnston, in the Toronto Star (12-3-04): [Andrew Johnston teaches American history at the University of Western Ontario and is currently serving as co-director of Western's Centre for American Studies]The day before President George Bush touched down in Ottawa to announce his second-term foreign policy consisted of staying the course, a U.N.-appointed panel came to a troubling conclusion: "There is little evident international acceptance," it

Mary L. Dudziak: Worried About Roe? It Already Is on Life Support Because of the Casey Decision of 1992

Mary L. Dudziak, in the San Francisco Chronicle (12-3-04):[Mary L. Dudziak is Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law and History, University of Southern California Law School.]Roe vs. Wade is in the news again, with