News at Home

Ron Paul: Interviews with Historian David Beito and Political Scientist Matthew Wilson

by Alexander Heffner

David BeitoMatthew WilsonDavid Beito InterviewDavid Beito, Professor of History, The University of Alabama, and author of Taxpayer’s Revolt In the context of our political history, is Rep. Ron Paul the most libertarian presidential candidate the country has ever seen?Yes, very much so.  I don’t think anyone in American history comes even close.Do you see parallels between Paul—in one or more dimensions—and any past presidential candidates?

Obama Shouldn't be Above Criticism by Progressives

by Jacob Kramer

It has become common for those on the progressive end of the political spectrum to assert that Barack Obama raised hopes for significant political change only to compromise too readily with conservative forces.  Early in his term, Obama was taken to task for passing a stimulus that was too small and contained too many tax cuts, failing to include a public option in his health care plan, and for escalating the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.  New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has made criticism of Obama one of his principal topics, said in October of last year that the political consequences of an insufficient stimulus package were a “catastrophe” and recently accused Obama of “abject surrender” in the negotiations over the debt ceiling.  In the summer of 2010, these criticisms became so intense that the White House Press Secretary, Richard Gibbs, denounced liberal critics of the administration as the “professional left” and said they “wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

What, the NRA Didn't Always Oppose Gun Control?

by Adam Winkler

Despite several high-profile mass shootings over the past year, including one targeting an elected official, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the prospects for new federal gun control laws are dim.  One reason is undoubtedly the National Rifle Association.  Often called the most powerful interest group in Washington, the NRA is typically dead-set against any new restrictions on guns and portrays any potential new law as evidence of the government¹s unrelenting hostililty to gun owners' rights.Yet,the NRA, wasn¹t always the hardline opponent of gun control we know today.  In fact, there was once a time when the NRA drafted and promoted restrictive gun control laws.When William C. Church and George W. Wingate founded the NRA in 1871, it wasn't to lobby against gun control and fight for the Second Amendment.  Church, a former reporter for a newspaper not exactly known for its support of gun rights, the New York Times, said the goal was to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis."

Occupy Wall Street has a History Student on Its Press Team—I Sit Down with Him for an Interview

by James Livingston

Herewith an interview with Mark Bray, a member of the OWS press team who happens to be a third-year graduate student in History at Rutgers, working with Temma Kaplan on modern Spain.  He’s studied philosophy at Wesleyan, taught English in China, and tried organizing retail workers.  He’ll be a speaker at the Teach-Out that Temma and I are coordinating at Rutgers for October 24th, 5:00-8:00 pm on the Brower Commons steps, College Ave, New Brunswick.  Be there! So, what brought you to Zuccotti Park?  

Jon Huntsman: Interviews with Journalist James Fallows and Historian Andrew Johns

by Alexander Heffner

James FallowsAndrew JohnsJames Fallows InterviewJames Fallows is chair in U.S. media at the University of Sydney and national correspondent for The Atlantic.Governor Jon Huntsman has more experience with/knowledge of China than any previous presidential candidate, true?  Doesn’t this give him the edge on domestic and foreign policy, given China’s economic impact on the United States and the entire globe?I’m not sure how Jon Huntsman’s experience compares in the entirety of U.S. history.  The first president George Bush, after all, had opened the U.S. “interest office” in China in the mid-1970s, at the dawn of normalized relations between the countries.  Herbert Hoover had actually lived and worked in China for some time, as an engineer (and had some command of Mandarin).But certainly among the current candidates, Jon Huntsman clearly has the most extensive overseas experience, by far—and not just with China. Whether or not this “gives him an edge” depends entirely on the judgment of the voters, starting in the Republican primary.

A Final Farewell to the Fairness Doctrine?

by Victor Pickard

The Fairness Doctrine, one of the most famous and controversial media policies ever debated, suffered a final death-blow recently when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) permanently struck it from the books.  Often mistaken for the “equal time” rule for broadcasting political candidates, the doctrine’s purpose was more progressive than requiring two sides to a debate.  It stipulated a two-part mandate that broadcasters must cover controversial issues of public importance, and do so in a way that represented contrasting views.While the Fairness Doctrine’s effectiveness is debatable, it encouraged broadcasters to be mindful of programming biases.  Now that it’s officially erased from the rules, we can pause to consider the decades-long saga of this oft-maligned and misunderstood doctrine.  For its history reflects a number of surprising ironies in our nation’s approach to media policy.

Incivility and Dysfunction in Congress is a National Crisis

by Ray Smock

In a radio broadcast in 1935, the great humorist Will Rogers explained how civility works in the U. S. Senate. “They always call each other gentlemen there.  By the tone they put in the word it would be more appropriate if they come right out and said ‘does the coyote from Maine yield?’  Then the man from Maine says ‘I yield,’ for if he don’t, the other guy keeps on talking anyhow.  So the coyote from Maine says ‘I yield to the polecat from Oregon.”A tall bronze statue of Will Rogers stands outside the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, facing the chamber so, as the story goes, he can keep an eye on the goings on there.  Rogers was no social or political scientist but his keen observations of the House and Senate rank him among the best of the many people over the past two centuries, both Americans and foreigners, who have tried to figure out this citadel of democracy.

We've Become a Nation Dangerously Beholden to the Past

by C. Wyatt Evans

Michael Kazin’s recent call for a renascent left to combat the conservative assault on America surely resonated with many readers.  For those of us struggling to make ends meet and concerned about financial security these are bewildering times.  In the face of potentially ruinous fiscal collapse, our national legislature remains ideologically polarized and hence incapable of acting.  On Main Street, moderate-income Americans defend the rights of multi-millionaires not to be taxed while one of the wealthiest of them all, Warren Buffet, criticizes the current tax structure as fundamentally unfair—to moderate-income Americans.  Kazin’s brief history of leftist activism in America offers a hopeful vision of what a rejuvenated left might accomplish.  His recommendation that it root itself in institutions of its own devising instead of relying upon universities and unions also makes good sense.  However, before the activism Kazin advocates can gain full traction we must, as a nation, face forward instead of back. 

Occupy Wall Street Isn't the Same Old Political Crap—It's Much, Much More

by James Livingston

A Century of Our Streets Vs. Wall Street

by Steve Fraser

Occupy Wall Street, the ongoing demonstration-cum-sleep-in that began a month ago not far from the New York Stock Exchange and has since spread like wildfire to cities around the country, may be a game-changer.  If so, it couldn’t be more appropriate or more in the American grain that, when the game changed, Wall Street was directly in the sights of the protesters.The fact is that the end of the world as we’ve known it has been taking place all around us for some time.  Until recently, however, thickets of political verbiage about cutting this and taxing that, about the glories of “job creators” and the need to preserve “the American dream,” have obscured what was hiding in plain sight -- that street of streets, known to generations of our ancestors as “the street of torments.”

Turning Downtowns from Ratholes to Artists' Lofts

by Roberta Brandes Gratz

Today, cities and their downtowns are so popular that it is difficult to remember back only three or four decades when this was anything but the case.  The 1976 opening of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston’s 1825 granite Quincy Hall was the opening gun of a dramatic turn-around.  Faneuil Hall was an inspiration for the adaptation of abandoned and abused theaters, hotels, public buildings, farmers’ markets or Main Street stores.  They served as the catalyst for a similar turn-around in each place.Baltimore’s James Rouse was the first major developer or retailer to understand that the old patterns of downtown activity did not die because they outlived their usefulness and validity.  Rouse absorbed the vision for Quincy of Boston’s architect Ben Thompson and his wife and partner, Jane Thompson, of a diversity of small, locally-owned stores anchored by an expansive food market. The rest is history.

Occupy Wall Street: A Sign of Our Times

by Judith Stein

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has captured the political imagination of the two parties and the media.  The right-wing media has been both hysterical and sarcastic while much of the center and the left has been enthusiastic, indulgent, or gently critical.  Yet even the most fervent find hope not in what it is now, political theater, but what it might become.  After spending two hours at Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza on Sunday, October 9, I am less impressed.  I think that the emergence of something like OWS was predictable, at least in retrospect, after the failure of its predecessor, Obama-mania.  The first put its faith in one man and the second in the hope that the 99 percent will rise up against the 1 percent.

Occupy Wall Street is Absolutely Exhilarating

by James Livingston

“This is my f**king Woodstock, man!”—end of march exclamation by 30-something.“I’ll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.”—sign held aloft by beautiful woman.“In a real democracy, bartenders and billionaires would be equal.”  “F**k that, in a real democracy, there’d be no billionaires.”—sign held aloft by smoker of joint and riposte by passerby.“Are we cool?  Can we stay on those sidewalks?”—questions asked by angry, tattooed marshal“What’s with all the cops at the doors?”  “It’s a protest.”  “Yeah, I was there, I mean the helmets and shit.”  “Seattle.”  “Seattle?”  “Globalization, we’re not gonna have people get out this space and break windows.”—exchange between me and focused policeman

Lessons from History for Occupy Wall Street on How to Build a Movement

by Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Steve Jobs: Arab-American, Buddhist, Psychedelic Drug User, and Capitalist World-Changer

by Juan Cole

The culture wars kicked off by the 1960s are still with us. Indeed, much of the discourse of contemporary American conservatism can be boiled down to “damn liberal hippies ruined the country and they were wrong about x, y and z.” Fox Cable News and other conservative mouthpieces go to extraordinary lengths to badmouth the 1960s counterculture. They even blamed John Walker Lindh, the American member of the Taliban, on Bay Area culture. But note that Lindh from his teenaged years was interested in the dry legal aspects of Islam, and rejected Sufi spirituality. Children of liberal parents become fundamentalists all the time (in fact, Rupert Murdoch’s media are attempting actively to produce that outcome). Lindh wasn’t warped by hippie liberalism– he rebuffed it, and might as well have rebuffed it for evangelicalism.

Blame Wall Street, Not the Baby Boomers

by Leonard Steinhorn

A hemorrhaging economy. A tough and frustrating job market. Downward pressure on wages. Housing out of reach. High energy costs. Government strapped for cash. Questions about our global standing. Wondering about the American Dream.That describes America all right, but it's the America of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when our country truly did seem to be falling apart.In our media-centric world it's easy to get caught up in the moment and think that things have never been this bad and our problems are worse than at any time in history.We like to think that our economic woes are unique to our time, that ours is the first era in which our democracy seems broken, that this is the only time in our history when the next generation may be worse off than the previous generation.What we need is a little perspective. And a little understanding of who's responsible.Dial back three decades and America's economy and preeminence seem far more precarious than what we believe it to be today.

How Do Historians Rate Obama?

The president was graded by 203 historians on 16 different criteria

Why Did Alabama Prevent a Prisoner from Reading a History Book? An Interview with Douglas A. Blackmon

by Fatima Begum

Douglas A. Blackmon is a senior writer for the Wall Street Journal and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.Last September, the Alabama Department of Corrections confiscated the book from Mark Melvin, a lifer at Kilby Correctional Facility near Montgomery, on the grounds that it was “too incendiary” and “too provocative and could potentially stir up racial hatred (Mr. Melvin is white.)Mr. Melvin has filed a lawsuit.I spoke to Mr. Blackmon about the controversy.

We Can't Abandon Our Veterans, but Slashing the VA Budget Will Do Just That

by Ed Hooper

The career soldier is and has always been a rare breed.  Finding the best and keeping the best requires an incentive package that keeps them in the ranks.  It isn’t an American invention.  Gaius Marius used it in 107 B.C. when he reorganized the Roman military from a bunch of conscripted land-owning adventurers into a standing army.The recent proposals to cut military retirement benefits by $42.5 billion as part of the deficit reduction program are an abandonment of a promise this nation gave to its career soldiers.  The argument being made by the Obama administration is that the current retirement system "provides generous benefits to the relatively few members who stay at least twenty years and no benefits for the roughly eighty percent of service members who stay less than twenty years."The current administration proposal is to set up a committee like the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, report its findings to the Pentagon and let them make the recommendations to Congress.  Among the ideas floated are creating 401ks retirees can’t touch until they’re fifty-seven or sixty; raising premiums on health insurance and the amount of co-pays on medications.

Occupy Wall Street Heralds a Global Counterculture

by Mark Naison

I spent about an hour in Liberty Plaza the other day sitting, walking around, and talking to people before the event I had come for—a Grade-In organized by teacher activists—finally began, and was stunned by how different the occupation was from any demonstration I had attended recently.First of all, in contrast to the last two protests I participated in—a Wisconsin Solidarity rally at City Hall and the Save Our Schools March on Washington—I saw few people my own age and no one I recognized, at least until the Grade-In started.  When I arrived, at 11:00 am, most of the people in Liberty Plaza were the ones who had slept there overnight, and the vast majority were in their 20s and 30s.  They were drumming, sweeping the sidewalk, talking to curious visitors—who were still few in number—eating or chilling with one another.  Their relaxed demeanor blew me away given the tumultuous events of the day before, when more than 700 protesters had been arrested by the NYPD after marching onto the Brooklyn Bridge.