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Wisdom and War: From Homer’s Trojan Horse to Spielberg’s "War Horse"

by Walter G. Moss

In Steven Spielberg’s 2011 World War I epic War Horse there is a scene in which Joey, the titular equine hero, is entangled in barbed wire in the no-man’s-land between German and British trenches. An English soldier hoists a white flag and goes out to disentangle Joey. He is eventually joined by a German soldier who brings wire cutters, and the two men free Joey, exchange first names and friendly words, and then decide who will take Joey back with them by a flip of a German coin.The scene moves us because amidst all the horrific and senseless killing of the First World War, we see a glimmer of human cooperation and decency that transcends national boundaries.

Obama’s America: Transcending Whiteness

by Ian Reifowitz

For the first time in our history, more than half the babies being born in the United States are non-white. This milestone signals a new chapter in the centuries-long struggle over who is included in what we call “the American people.” At the time of the American Revolution, only those of Anglo-Saxon origin were considered “real Americans,” in terms not only of citizenship, rights, and liberties, but also in the dominant cultural understanding of the term. As large numbers of Irish Catholics, Jews, Italians, Russians, and others from all over Europe arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the definition of “the American people” expanded. Soon, our commonly understood notion of ourselves as a people had come to include all whites. Now, in the twenty-first century, we must inculcate a truly inclusive definition of Americanness that transcends whiteness.  

A Liberal Challenge to Wahhabist Orthodoxy May Be the Way Forward for Islam

by Judith Mendelsohn Rood

The Kaaba in Mecca at night. Credit: WikipediaNinety years after the abolition of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the League of Nations Mandate in Palestine in 1922, Hassan al-Banna and his political ally, Hajj Amin al-Hussayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood, have won their greatest political victory: the presidency of Egypt. Despite the efforts of the opposition to keep Egypt from becoming Salafist, the authoritarian tyranny that was the Mubarak regime has been thoroughly repudiated by the Egyptian masses. As in Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood’s moral standing has proven lethal to Arab nationalism. The consequences for Muslim conservatives, liberals, Christians and women there have already been felt in Gaza, where Hamas has used its popularity to wage jihad against Israel and those whose presence is not welcome in Salafi society.

Gail Collins Almost Remembers the Alamo

by John Willingham

The first chapter of New York Times columnist Gail Collins’s new book about Texas is called “Remember the Alamo,” and the last chapter concludes with the words “Victory or Death,” proclaimed to the world by Alamo commander William Barret Travis before the fall of the old mission and the deaths of Travis and the other defenders.The witty, incisive, but occasionally flippant story that emerges between these bookend pages is indeed defined by the columnist’s own battle with the Alamo, or, rather, with what may be called the Alamo mentality. From this battle she emerges with an impression that will be shared by many outside the state, reviled by most Anglos within the state, and welcomed by the state’s emerging majority of Latinos.

The Legacy of the War of 1812 Is With Us Still

by James M. Banner, Jr.

Battle of Lake Erie by William Henry Powell, 1873. Two hundred years ago today, American naval vessels fired the opening shots in what we know as the War of 1812. Like all wars, this was a war filled with ironies and unintended consequences. It's also a war that's hard to fit into the nation's triumphalist mythology. For one thing, it was a misbegotten war. Lacking today's fast communications, Washington didn't learn until after the American declaration of war that the British had already repealed the offending trade restrictions that were a major U.S. pretext for taking up arms. The war's final battle, Andrew Jackson's celebrated victory at New Orleans in early 1815, might also have been avoided with faster communications. The battle took place two weeks after negotiators had signed a peace agreement on Christmas eve 1814. The final irony is that the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, left things as they had been at the start. The U.S. gained nothing concrete from two and half years of conflict and the loss of 15,000 American lives. Yet if the war is often derided or forgotten, its consequences lie all around us, rooted deep in American life.

The Most Famous Unknown Writer of the Twentieth Century: An Interview with Historian Peter Clarke on Winston Churchill as Author

by Robin Lindley

I’ve never had any money except what my pen has brought me.--Winston Churchill (1945)The achievements of Winston Churchill as a politician and statesmen now eclipse his career as a writer. Perhaps the most popular image of Churchill is the cigar-chomping, intrepid prime minister who led Britain through the darkest days of the Second World War. But he earned his living as a writer and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1953 for Literature -- not for his celebrated statecraft.

Robert Caro and the Mythical Cuban Missile Crisis

by Sheldon M. Stern

The editor-in-chief of HNN, Rick Shenkman, asked me recently if I would write a critique of the account of the Cuban missile crisis in Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power, Volume 4 of his authoritative biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. Shenkman felt that Caro had utilized “myths that you debunked years ago on HNN” -- and, unfortunately, he was right.

We Need to Stop Using the Phrase "American Civil Religion"

by Ira Chernus

“The use of civil religion as a historical lens has enjoyed something of a revival lately,” Raymond Haberski wrote in a recent article on History News Network. he was kind enough to include me in a list of scholars who have recently written on the topic of “American civil religion.” Seeing my name on that list reminded me of a funny story.I did indeed write a survey of the study of American civil religion for a comprehensive reference work on American religion. When I was invited to write that piece, I figured the best way to do the research was to teach a seminar on the subject. So for a whole semester my students and I worked through the scholarly literature on the topic. Of course we started with a big dose of Robert Bellah, who is still always cited in anything written on American civil religion. It’s a sort of ritual requirement, but in fact one can’t understand the civil religion tradition in America without carefully scrutinizing Bellah’s work. By the time we were done with that scrutiny, I was beginning to suspect that there was something fundamentally wrong with the whole category.

Remembering Watergate

by Stanley Kutler

Credit: Wikipedia/HNNNo leak, no "investigatory journalism" ever revealed any facet of what we know as "Watergate" that was not already a subject of investigation and inquiry by properly-authorized authorities. The 40th anniversary commemoration of the Watergate break-in nevertheless appears to focus on the role of a few journalists. Robert Redford will reprise his 1976 movie All the President's Men with a documentary version. Now, of course, he can identify Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat" as the "leaker" who destroyed Nixon's presidency. Felt indeed played a part, and Nixon knew of his actions in October 1972, as revealed in Nixon's tapes released in 1997, eight years before Felt, suffering from dementia, went public. Nixon was furious because he had considered Felt, "that Jew" (he was not) for the post of FBI Director. Nixon realized he could do nothing for Felt "knew too much" -- as, for example, the illegal break-ins of Nixon's "Plumbers."

Egypt: An Election within a Coup within a Coup

by Juan Cole

Arab satellite television is showing lines of Egyptian voters at polling stations on Saturday, as some proportion of the 50 million eligible voters makes a decision between a former air force general and a leader of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. The military has spread 150,000 troops through the country to safeguard some 13,000 polling stations.

Stay Out of the Syrian Morass

by Daniel Pipes

As the Syrian government makes increasingly desperate and vicious efforts to keep power, pleas for military intervention, more or less on the Libyan model, have become more insistent. This course is morally attractive, to be sure. But should Western states follow this counsel? I believe not.Those calls to action fall into three main categories: a Sunni Muslim concern for co-religionists, a universal humanitarian concern to stop torture and murder, and a geopolitical worry about the impact of the ongoing conflict. The first two motives can be fairly easily dispatched. If Sunni governments -- notably those of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar -- choose to intervene on behalf of fellow Sunnis against Alawis, that is their prerogative but Western states have no dog in this fight.Who was responsible for the massacre in Houla, Syria, on May 25-26? Shown here: a mass funeral of victims.

The Justice Cascade: Political Scientist Dr. Kathryn Sikkink on Human Rights Prosecutions

by Robin Lindley

In May 2012, the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague sentenced former Liberian president Charles G. Taylor to 50 years in prison for atrocities and of aiding and abetting war crimes committed in Sierra Leone in the 1990s including murder, rape, sexual slavery and horrific mutilation, all in exchange for blood diamonds. In this landmark case for human rights law, Taylor became the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg trials in Germany after World War II.Then in June 2012, an Egyptian court sentenced ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, to life in prison for failing to stop the killing of unarmed demonstrators during the protests that ended Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule.

LBJ Thought Nixon Committed Treason to Win the 1968 Election

by Ken Hughes

The president, in a telephone call to Senate Minority Leader said of Nixon's suspected sabotage of Vietnamese peace talks, "This is treason."

Channelling George Washington: The Missing Word in the Declaration of Independence

by Thomas Fleming

“I bet you can’t tell me the important word that Tom Jefferson left out of the Declaration of Independence.”“You’ve got me baffled, Mr. President. What is it?”“Brotherhood.”“A fascinating thought. The French included it in their declaration in 1789. Liberté, egalité, fraternité. Did anyone notice this in your lifetime?”“It occurred to me when I became president, and tried to govern our new country. I didn’t say anything about it. But I did a few things.”“Give us some examples.”

Channelling George Washington: Us Against Them

by Thomas Fleming

"Don’t people realize this election is being infiltrated by the most tired idea in the political lexicon?""I haven’t heard from you for a good while, Mr. President.""I try to stay neutral in presidential elections. After all, I have to deal with the winners when they eventually transfer to Elysium. But I can’t stay silent about the current election. The Democrats -- and, I regret to say, President Obama -- are promoting the world’s worst and oldest idea.""What would that be?""The 1 percent versus the 99 percent and the so-called Buffett Rule, named after the billionaire who supposedly pays less taxes than his secretary.""It’s become a very popular slogan. You hear it on TV and radio constantly."

Racism, Wheeling, and a Small-Town Newspaper, 1968 and 2008

by Walter G. Moss

In a recent opinion piece (“How Racist Are We? Ask Google”) on The New York Times “Campaign Stops” blog by Harvard Ph.D. candidate Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, he writes of his use of Google Insights to determine “racially charged search rates ... in different parts of the United States.” Two “media markets” he compared were Denver, which had one of the lowest such rates, and Wheeling, West Virginia, which had one of the highest.Based on the presidential votes John Kerry received in 2004 plus the average gain made by Democratic congressional candidates in 2008, he concluded that “Mr. Obama should have received about 57 percent of votes in both Denver and Wheeling.” In fact, however, while winning 57 percent in the Denver area, Obama obtained less than 48 percent of the Wheeling vote. The discrepancy, Stephens-Davidowitz believes, is mainly due to racism.

Is Independence Day a Radical Holiday?

by Hsuan L. Hsu

Fourth of July on Helena Island, SC, 1939. Credit: NARAAsk people what we celebrate on Independence Day, and they’ll probably name a discrete historical event such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the American Revolution. But for over two centuries, diverse groups have continually invoked and contested ideas underlying the Declaration and the Revolutionary War in ways that recall William Faulkner’s observation that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Since 1776, the meaning of July 4 has become much broader and more complex than literal interpretations of U.S. history would suggest. The Revolution and the Declaration of Independence have taken on a range of meanings for people in the U.S. and throughout the world fighting to realize their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The struggle for independence did not end when Cornwallis surrendered -- it only shifted from open war to political contests over ideas and policy.

A Hollywood Movie Could Help Either Democrats or Republicans in the Presidential Election

by Robert Brent Toplin

Sometimes a movie from the Hollywood studios has the potential to affect a presidential election. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, screened in theaters during the presidential race of 2004, appeared to boost the fortunes of the Democratic candidate. Then a conservative effort to discredit the film eventually blunted Michael Moore’s impact on public opinion. This year, a new movie in development about the hunt for Osama bin Laden appeared likely to remind voters of President Obama’s role in defeating the notorious terrorist. It was scheduled to appear in theaters in October. But once again, Republicans found a way to undermine cinema’s influence in a tight presidential contest. They pressured executives at Sony Pictures to delay the screening. Evidently, that pressure made an impact. Sony later announced it would release the movie after the November elections.

The Real Reason the Bible Bans Homosexuality

by Eric Berkowitz

With the exception of requiring husbands to be faithful to their wives -- at least in theory -- the Hebrews treated adultery much as their neighbors did. They struck out on their own, however, in designating a new sexual “abomination” where there had been no precedent: The Bible made anal sex between men a crime of the worst order, for which death by stoning became the only option. “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable,” commands Leviticus. “Their blood will be on their own heads.” Men had been “lying together” since the beginning of civilization, of course. This was the first time they risked their lives by doing so.

Putin's Russia is Far More Complicated than a Mere Autocracy

by Mark D. Steinberg

Now that Vladimir Putin is once again considered a dictatorial menace to the Western world, it's worth remembering that he was the subject of vicious mockery within Russia as recently as 2012.