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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.

Our Latest Mormon Moment

by Matthew Bowman

A “Mormon moment” usually works like this. Every few years Mormons edge their way into the American national consciousness: Mitt Romney and his stiff smile, the whiskey-less 2002 Winter Olympics, state raids on polygamous compounds in Arizona in the early 1950s, and so on back to the life and death of Joseph Smith. Whatever the inspiration, in a Mormon moment Americans scrutinize Mormon history and beliefs with an eye for absurdity, and Mormon theology and practice with faint worry that these things are incompatible with the assumptions, unspoken and not, by which American public life functions. In a Mormon moment, Americans look at Mormonism and, generally, fail to see themselves reflected back.

Coca-Cola Profits Off Egyptian Jew's Seized Property

by Edwin Black

For 15 years, Egyptian-Jewish businessman Refael Bigio has been battling a goliath corporate adversary, The Coca-Cola Company. Bigio charges that Coke has been profiting from his family's stolen property just outside Cairo. The Bigio family's property was expropriated by Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser in the mid-1960s during one of Egypt's anti-Jewish purges. Over the course of a decade and a half, The Coca-Cola Company has steadfastly refused to bargain in good faith or to negotiate any fair compensation for the expropriated property, according to Bigio's lawyers. In the company's defense, Coke's attorneys have defended Egypt's anti-Jewish seizures and incidentally those of Hitler's Germany as confiscations that "did not violate international law." (see Bigio v. Coca-Cola, et al., No. 97-CV-02858, Document 63)

The Two Elections that Dealt Unions the Biggest Blows Last Tuesday Didn't Happen in Wisconsin

by Kevin Boyle

Last Tuesday two elections delivered brutal blows to unions and their progressive allies. Neither was in Wisconsin.The Wisconsin results were bad enough. Scott Walker’s widely-watched recall campaign pit organized labor against a phalanx of incredibly wealthy private donors, led by the billionaire who’d financed the swift-boating of John Kerry in 2004. In the end Walker didn’t simply survive the recall. He won by a larger margin than he had when he was elected governor in 2010. He did considerably better in urban areas, where his percentage of the vote shot up by a startling eight percentage points. He even gained ground in union households. There’s no doubt about it. In Wisconsin labor had suffered a tough, tough defeat.

Will We Be Able to Preserve Yellowstone, America's Living Cathedral?

by George Black

With Memorial Day weekend now behind us, the crowds -- more than three million people in an average year -- have begun the great annual pilgrimage to one of America’s greatest national icons: Yellowstone.Planning my own visit this summer, I just checked the latest report from the National Park Service on travel conditions in the park. The news is not good. Eighty percent of Yellowstone’s 185 miles of roads, “are in a structurally deficient state, with poor quality road bases failing under the weight, speed and volume of modern traffic for which they were not designed.”

Vietnam is Back in Town

by Jerry Lembcke

Just as perennial announcements that “Freud is dead” or “God is dead” signal that they're anything but, the recurring claims that America is over and done with the war in Vietnam are just as certainly premature.The aftershocks of the military defeat in Vietnam reverberated through the country’s economic, political, and cultural institutions well into the 1980s. By the end of the century, though, the past-tensing of the war became common. The roll-back of Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in 1991 prompted President George H.W. Bush to declare the so-called Vietnam Syndrome “kicked,” the hangover inhibiting the national will for more war cured. When President Bill Clinton established diplomatic relations with the former enemy regime in Hanoi in 1995, the July 12 Chicago Tribune announced: “The War in Vietnam is over.”

The Forgotten American Pandemic: Historian Dr. Nancy K. Bristow on the Influenza Epidemic of 1918

by Robin Lindley

The epidemic is seldom mentioned, and most Americans have apparently forgotten it. This is not surprising. The human mind always tries to expunge the intolerable from memory, just as it tries to conceal it while current.--H.L. Mencken on the 1918 influenza epidemicThe toll was staggering. From 1918 to 1920, influenza killed more that 50 million people as it spread around the world in the worst pandemic in recorded history.In the United States, the flu infected a quarter of the population and killed 675,000 people -- more than ten times the number of American combat deaths in World War I. And this unusual form of influenza proved especially lethal to healthy young adults. The epidemic shook the confidence of medical professionals who were unable to determine the cause of the outbreak or develop a cure.

Comparing the Trump – DeSantis Race to the Republicans' 1912 Debacle is a Stretch... Right?

by Adam Burns

The whiplash of Ron DeSantis's rise and fall against Trump in the polls could be nothing in comparison to the political shockwave that would result if the Florida governor succeeds in taking the GOP nomination, but Trump doesn't go quietly—the falling-out between Roosevelt and Taft shows how it might go.