Roundup: Historians' Take

Juan Cole: Alleged Christian Terrorists Has Much in Common with Mahdi Army

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] FBI raids on the Hutaree Christian militia brought to light this formerly little-known group based in Adrian, Michigan. Unlike the generally secular white supremacist organizations, Hutaree are explicitly Christians. Many seem to be millenarians, expecting the end of time to come soon. Like

William Astore: Military Clothing for Presidents? No, Sir!

[Professor Astore currently teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, PA. He writes regularly for TomDispatch.com and can be reached at wastore@pct.edu.] This past weekend, President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan, during which he doffed his civilian coat and tie and donned a "Commander-in-chief" leather flight jacket provided to him by the Air Force. I suppose the president believed he could

Robert Zaller: Bring Back the Drachma? The Greek Economic Crisis and Europe

[Robert Zaller is Professor of History at Drexel University. He appears in the recently released film documentary on the Barnes Foundation, The Art of the Steal.] When the euro—the ev-roh, as Greeks pronounce it—replaced the drachma as the currency of Greece, I decided to keep a few bills and coins in my pocket. The drachma was, after all, the oldest currency in Europe. Socrates bought his groceries with it (or, more likely, Xanthippe). It had been down before, but never fi

John Charmley: The Special Relationship Has Been a Myth for Decades

[John Charmley is Professor of Modern History at the University of East Anglia.] Only in the UK would it take 60-odd years for MPs to realise that our relationship with the US is no longer particularly special; and even then the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee can’t bring itself to drop the word altogether. In 1951 the new President, Eisenhower, noted with some sadness in his diary that Churchill seemed to be living in the past with regard to the UK/US relationship.

Julian Zelizer: Risk for GOP Comes from Extreme Fringe

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] As he stood before the delegates of the 1964 Republican Convention in San Francisco, California, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the party's presidential nominee, said, "I

Victor Davis Hanson: Giddy About Remaking America

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.] If we assume that Obama & Co. wish to radically remake the United States — along the lines of a European socialist society, or perhaps to the left even of a Belgium or Denmark — the

David A. Nichols: Obama's Inner Ike

[David A. Nichols is the author of "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution."] President Obama gets it. So did President Eisenhower half a century ago. When you are breaking a decades-long legislative logjam, you take what you can get so you can do better later. Critics deplore the compromises Obama made on healthcare. And it's true that the bill he signed Tuesday doesn't accomplish everything reform advocates had hoped

Moshe Dann: Israel Won’t Be Bullied by Obama, But Bibi’s Tactic Could Fail as Well

[The author, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.] Harsh condemnations of Israel for building in areas of Jerusalem acquired after the Six Day War in 1967 have backfired. If President Obama thought that he would move negotiations ahead and force Israel to make more concessions, he caused the exact opposite situation. Israelis have united in support of Prime Minister Netanyahu, while Arab Palestinian leaders have, on cue, stepped ba

Jennifer Burns: The Return of Market Fundamentalism

[Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia and author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford, 2009).] THE CRAZIES have come out of the conservative woodwork. Enraged and infuriated by the election of President Obama, bereft of any intellectual leadership or compelling figurehead, unable to stomach their declining powers in a multicultural America, conservatism has been reduced to a rump movement of alienated working cl

Michael Bliss: The Problem of Saying No to the Sick

[Michael Bliss is a historian and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. His books include The Discovery of Insulin and biographies of Frederick Banting, William Osler and Harvey Cushing.] Modern health-care systems don't work very well. Despite the best efforts by the U.S. Congress, despite the single-payer system in Canada, there is no easy resolution of the fundamental policy issue. This is the conflict between the need to supply health care as a matter of right and th

Stanley Kutler: So Much for a ‘Post-Racial’ America

[Stanley Kutler, a UW-Madison professor emeritus, is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] Thanks to Newt Gingrich’s loose lips, the cat is out of the bag: The Republican Party, answering the call of a large part of its following, will continue its subtle and not-so-subtle uses of the “race card.” Gingrich said during the health care debate that “much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” when Congress enacted civil rights legislation, P

Jesse Lemisch: Invoking "Sedition" Against Tea Partiers is Short-Sighted, Ahistorical, and Suicidal

[Jesse Lemisch is a Professor Emeritus of History at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.] The Nation joins a great tradition (Alien and Sedition Acts, Palmer Raids, Smith Act) by invoking "sedition" against Teabaggers. It seems utterly suicidal for the Left to invoke "sedition," as Melissa Harris-Lacewell does in condemning Teabaggers in The Nation . What a proud tradition we would join by doing this: Alien a

Jonathan Zimmerman: Reaction to Violence Muted by Stereotypes

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.] If you live in the Delaware Valley, you've surely heard about the brutal December attacks on Asian students at South Philadelphia High School. Seven kids were hospitalized with injuries sustaine

Natasha Gill: Britain's Historic Role in West Asia

[Natasha Gill is a research associate at Columbia University, New York] The reprimand of Israel by David Miliband, the U.K. Foreign Secretary, resonated sharply in an already difficult week for Israel. But Britain can do more to influence West Asia than register a complaint, expel a Mossad officer, or sit on the sidelines as Washington pursues its Sisyphean efforts to renew the peace process. Of all the western powers it is Britain that has a unique responsibility to Is

Burt Folsom: First Principles of American Governance

[Burt Folsom is professor of history at Hillsdale College] The vote on the healthcare bill was disappointing, and many advocates of limited government are planning tactics for the next stages of the debate–both on healthcare and on future interventions planned by the president. Such strategy sessions are worthwhile, but the larger problem is this: We don’t yet have enough Americans who recognize the advantages of limited government and the menace of centralized power and big federal

Joseph Crespino: Lessons on States' Rights

[Joseph Crespino, an associate history professor at Emory University, is the author of “In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution” and co-editor, with Matthew Lassiter, of “The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism.” He is writing a biography of Strom Thurmond.] Though Republicans in Washington have lost the battle over health care, state GOP leaders are taking up the flag and running with it. Even before President Barack Obama signed t

Kenneth W. Mack: How the Congressional Process Has Changed

[Kenneth W. Mack is a professor at Harvard Law School. This article originally appeared in The Boston Globe.] WHILE HISTORY’S verdict on the Obama administration will not be rendered for quite some time, the passage of health reform legislation stands as a signal achievement. Supporters say the new law places this administration within the Democratic Party’s longstanding

Tom Engelhardt: All the World's a Stage (for the U.S.)

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publis

Jerry Z. Muller: Antisemitism and This Recession: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

[Jerry Z. Muller is a professor of history at The Catholic University of America in Washington, and author of the recently published “Capitalism and the Jews” (Princeton University Press).] It was late 2008, and if ever the country seemed primed for a revived outbreak of the populist formula equating Wall Street with Jews and both of these with evil, this was a moment when the stars were aligned in malignant confluence.... Jewish anxiety was only heightened when, around

Jill Lepore: Glenn Beck, Eugenics, and History

[Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University where she is also chair of the History and Literature Program. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995.] Glenn Beck likes to give history lessons. His desk is strewn with books. “Read history!” he’ll holler into the camera. He’s even got a blackboard and chalk. I got to thinking about Beck while writing about