Roundup: Historians' Take

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

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

Eric Foner: Reading Lincoln in Pakistan

[Eric Foner, a member of The Nation's editorial board, is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and author, most recently, of Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction.] Every generation and every political movement, it seems, reinvents Abraham Lincoln in its own image. But rarely has he been invoked so cynically as on November 4, when President-General Pervez Musharraf quoted extensively from Lincoln to justify the suspension of the Pakistani Constitu

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

Daniel Pipes: Is Bush Mr. Palestine?

Called the best friend Israel ever had in the White House, George W. Bush is, in my view, worrisomely over-confident. He believes he has discovered the solution to a highly complex and subtle century-old conflict. But I expect major problems.The cover of the Nov. 24 Economist shows a picture of Bush under a bold headline that reads"Mr Palestine." The subtitle deems him"The only man who could make it h

Stephanie Coontz: Taking Marriage Private

[Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Evergreen State College, is the author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”] WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity. For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the val

Bernard Lewis: Have the Arabs finally decided to accept the existence of Israel?

[Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).] Herewith some thoughts about tomorrow's Annapolis peace conference, and the larger problem of how to approach the Israel-Palestine conflict. The first question (one might think it is obvious but apparently not) is, "What is the conflict about?" There are basically two possibilities: that it is abou

Shelby Steele: Obama Is Right on Iran

[Shelby Steele, PhD., is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover fellow in 1994.] After a recent Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama proclaimed that were he to become president, he would talk directly even to America's worst enemies. One could imagine President Obama as a kind of superhero taking off in Air Force One for Tehran, the

Gary Leupp: Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan;Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and

Murray Polner: War Against Iran?

[Mr. Polner, a Book Editor at HNN, is the author of “No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran,” “Rabbi: The American Experience,” and, with Stefan Merken, edited the recently published “Peace, Justice & Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition.” ] ‘American Jewish groups are aggressively attempting to rally support for isolating Iran until it ends its suspected nuclear weapons program,” the JTA recently reported. “They are lobby

Daniel Pipes: Lee Harvey Oswald's Malign Legacy

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.]What's wrong with American liberalism? What happened to the self-assured, optimistic, and practical Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy? Why has Joe Lieberman, their closest contemporary incarnation, been run out of the party? How did ant

John J. Pitney, Jr.: Ghosts of 1992

[John J. Pitney, Jr., is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College, in Claremont, California. ] Senator Hillary Clinton has had to face questions about her toughness. The Boston Herald quotes Tobe Berkowitz, associate dean of Boston University’s College of Communication: “If you’re not tough enough to take the slings and arrows from Barack Obama, how are you going to deal with Putin or Chavez?” Senator Clinton helped herself with a confident performan

Jonathan Zimmerman: America's addiction to sports

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."] Last week, when a federal grand jury indicted baseball star Barry Bonds for perjury, it confirmed an ugly truth: America's got a big drug problem. I'm not talking about steroids, Mr. Bonds' alleged performance-enhancer of choice. Instead, I'm talking about athletics themselves. Americans are addicted to c

Allan Lichtman: Conservative Big Government ... Whither American Conservatism (Part 2)

[Mr. Lichtman teaches history at American University.] Conservatism has always been about the purposes of government rather than the size or scope of government. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that George W. Bush has built a form a conservative big government during his presidency. However, big government poses a serious political problem for conservatives because it contradicts their rhetorical defense of limited government, states’ rights, fiscal responsibil

Thomas Fleming: So the French President Likes Us ... It's Not Really a Surprise

[Thomas Fleming is the president of the Society of American Historians and a member of the board of directors of HNN.] President George Bush’s recent love fest with French President Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines around the world. The new president was reversing a decade of America-hating and America-obstructing by French politicians and diplomats. He amazed pundits from London to Washington to Moscow by getting elected as an open admirer of America. Almost no one seems to have

Frederick Kagan & Michael O'Hanlon: Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem

[Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.] AS the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss. Nor would it be strategically prudent to withdraw our forces from an improving situation in Iraq to cope with a deteriorating one in Pakistan. We need to think — now — about our feas

Deborah Lipstadt: Rwanda: A new form of genocide denial

On January 27th there will be a panel at Emory University regarding Rwanda genocide denial. These deniers cannot, of course, deny that the killings took place but they try to depict them as the "normal" course of business in Rwanda. The mantra of these deniers is: Tutsis have been killing Hutus for years. This was an example of the Hutus striking back. Other than simply being incorrect, this mantra essentially blames the victims for their own brutal deaths. Wh

Juan Cole: Combating Muslim Extremism

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] All the major Republican presidential candidates have bought into George W. Bush's rhetoric of a central struggle against Muslim extremism and have thus committed themselves to a generational, often self-generating war. By foregrounding this issue, they have ensured that it will be pivotal to the 2008 pr

Gary Leupp: Tobacco and the State ... A Brief History

[Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu. ] My son who just turned 18 announced, "Hey, now I can buy cigarettes." I'm sure he was just joking. But since he can, in fact, now legally do this in Massachusetts, it set me to thinking about the history of this problem of t