Recently Published

How to Write a Good Memoir (It Helps If You Were Once Targeted by the Unabomber)

by Lawrence S. Wittner

As I’m not a famous politician, movie star, or athlete, people might well wonder how I -- a mere historian and academic -- ended up writing my recently-published autobiography, Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual. In fact, sometimes I wonder about it myself.

What the War over Contraception is Really About: Control over Women's Bodies

by Ruth Rosen

For weeks, bewildered Americans have witnessed politicians debate whether or not contraception should be covered by President’s Obama’s new health care plan. On March 1, after some of the most bizarre theatrical antics remembered in this nation’s political history, the U.S. Senate finally interrupted this surreal soap opera with a cliff hanger.  By only two votes, they defeated an amendment that would have allowed religious employers to refuse to pay for the contraception of their employees.  The pilot episode of the drama began on February 16, when President Obama announced that all the employers of all institutions, regardless of their religious affiliation, would have to pay for contraception.  When the Catholic Church and right-wing fringe went ballistic, he compromised and said that if an institution felt it was violating its religious beliefs, then the insurance company would have to pay. 

Does Barack Obama Have True Political Wisdom? (Yes, He Does.)

by Walter G. Moss

In two previous essays on "Political Wisdom" I dealt with the topic generally. The first was much longer, amply footnoted, and considered how it applied to both elected officials and the electorate. The second and shorter essay summarized many of the findings of the first and dealt primarily with the virtues and values required of a politically wise president. The present essay also summarizes a longer, more scholarly essay, this time on President Obama’s political wisdom. No political leader exercises such wisdom all the time. Even our greatest presidents, like Lincoln, sometimes acted unwisely.

The Legal Case Against Attacking Iran

by Bruce Ackerman

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington has provoked a broad debate over the military and political wisdom of an attack on Iran. But so far, there has been little attention to the legal issues involved, which are crucial. American support for a preemptive strike would be a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution.

Is Rick Santorum's Fundamentalist Catholicism at Odds with Protestant Christianity?

by Steven Conn

Rick Santorum has cast his presidential campaign as a religious crusade and has made no apology for it. Satan is loose in the land, according to Santorum, and he has offered himself as the only man capable of exorcising the demon.Santorum has surged in the polls among GOP voters precisely because he is so comfortable mixing politics and religion. He presents a stark contrast to Mitt Romney, who seems profoundly reluctant to talk about his Mormonism.Yet despite putting his religious convictions front and center in his campaign, Santorum hasn't been entirely candid about what those convictions are. He is hiding certain aspects of them in plain sight.Santorum is a Catholic. While he has always acknowledged this, he has downplayed the specifics of his Catholic faith in order to curry favor with fundamentalist Protestants, many of whom regard Catholicism with roughly the same disdain they have for Mormonism.

Does Mimi Alford's New Memoir Finally Mean the Death Knell for the Camelot Myth of JFK?

by Vaughn Davis Bornet

The confirmation of the philandering JFK.

Should We Really Still Like Ike? Interview with Stephen Schlesinger

by David Austin Walsh

Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential reputation has been on the uptick for the past several years. His presidency has been traditionally eclipsed by the glamor and tragedy of the Kennedy administration in popular memory, but academics have been more kind: a 1999 C-SPAN poll of historians ranked Ike eighth of all the presidents. And his place in public imagination may be growing: In a 2005 Gallup poll, Ike cracked the top ten amongst the general public for greatest president in history, and most recently in a 2012 Harris poll was named the fifth-greatest president since World War II (he was only beat by Reagan, FDR, JFK, and Clinton).Ross Douthat, an op-ed writer for the New York Times, devoted a column last Sunday to Eisenhower's successes as president. He attributed Ike's modest performance in popular and scholarly rankings to the fact that the Eisenhower administration eschewed crowd-pleasing "greatness" in favor of consistency and competence.

Khamenei Takes Control, Forbids Nuclear Bomb

by Juan Cole

Early returns in Iran’s 9th parliamentary election since the 1979 revolution show that Ahmadinejad’s lay populists have taken a drubbing, and that hard line supporters of clerical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are ascendant. Ahmadinejad’s sister, Parvin, who stood for election from their own hometown of Garmsar, was defeated, a major blow to the president.Western reporters keep saying that the parliamentary results have no implication for Iran’s nuclear program. But they only say this because they either don’t pay attention to what Iranian leaders actually say, or discount their statements as lies (treating them much less respectfully than they treated notorious fraud Andrew Breitbart in their fluffy obituaries last week).A week and a half ago, Khamenei gave a major foreign policy speech in which he said,

What is True Political Wisdom? A Primer for the 2012 Election

by Walter G. Moss

We want our leaders to exercise political wisdom. At least, we do if we think about it. Does anybody really desire unwise leaders? But what do we mean by political wisdom? What virtues and values does a wise leader possess? The present essay, condensed from a much longer footnoted essay, attempts to answer these questions. It does so partly by looking at what past thinkers, starting with Aristotle, have said about political wisdom.

Pat Buchanan was Breitbart Before Breitbart

by Timothy Stanley

Pat Buchanan’s dismissal from MSNBC is probably the best thing to happen to him since he was hired by MSNBC. For ten years, the pundit was the voice of populist conservatism on the network – sparring with Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews over abortion, gay rights, war, taxes, and affirmative action. His career was brought to an end by the publication of his latest book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, released in November 2011. The book argues that America is breaking up under the pressure of demographic change—driven by immigration and multiculturalism. The liberal lobbying group Color of Change took offense at chapter titles like “The End of White America” and demanded Buchanan’s dismissal. On February 17, 2012, he announced that MSNBC had caved under pressure and he was no longer on its staff. Since then, it feels like he has never been off television.

An Interview with Ambassador David Scheffer, the Architect of the Modern War Crimes Tribunals

by Robin Lindley

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. ― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Mass atrocities in the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere shocked the world in the 1990s. The human toll and horror were incomprehensible in these savage conflicts, which saw a resurgence of concentration camps, “ethnic cleansing,” genocide with machetes and farm implements, the “new” war crime of mass rape, mutilations to terrorize populations into submission, and other innumerable assaults on life and property.In light of these horrific crimes, a key component of U.S. foreign policy under the Clinton administration in the 1990s became the pursuit of international justice and a determination to prevent and punish atrocities, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

IBM’s Role in the Holocaust? New Documents Confirm the Worst

by Edwin Black

Newly-released documents expose more explicitly the details of IBM’s pivotal role in the Holocaust—all six phases: identification, expulsion from society, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination. Moreover, the documents portray with crystal clarity the personal involvement and micro-management of IBM president Thomas J. Watson in the company’s co-planning and co-organizing of Hitler’s campaign to destroy the Jews. IBM’s twelve-year alliance with the Third Reich was first revealed in my book IBM and the Holocaust, published simultaneously in 40 countries in February 2001. It was based on some 20,000 documents drawn from archives in seven countries. IBM never denied any of the information in the book; and despite thousands of media and communal requests, as well as published articles, the company has remained silent.

Santorum Misunderstands Both Kennedy and Religious Pluralism

by Joel K. Goldstein

Even without its ugly imagery, Rick Santorum's repeated claim that John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech about religious freedom made him "throw up" would rank as one of the most unsettling remarks of the 2012 campaign. Contrary to Santorum, Kennedy did not say or imply that "people of faith have no role in the public square," and his speech ranks as one of the classic statements of the pluralistic foundations of our country.In September 1960, when some Protestants suggested that Kennedy's Catholicism should disqualify him for the presidency, Kennedy confronted the role of religion in politics in a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. In words more poetry than prose, Kennedy argued that no one should be denied public office because of his faith, that no public official should request or accept "instructions on public policy" from any "ecclesiastical source," and that no religious entity should seek "to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."

How Santorum Misunderstands Kennedy's Catholic Speech

by David Greenberg

Rick Santorum may have extreme views, but at least he describes them colorfully. The man who once likened homosexuality to “man on dog” sex caused a stir again Sunday by saying on ABC News’ This Week that John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech about religious freedom made him want to vomit. Deploring JFK’s assertion that “the separation of church and state is absolute,” Santorum explained: “You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live [in] that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?”

Rick Santorum Follows the Path Reagan, Nixon, and George Wallace Laid Before Him

by Ron Briley

On the evening of February 23 in Arizona, during yet another televised presidential debate, the apparent new frontrunner for the Republican nomination Rick Santorum was the target of relentless verbal jabs from his chief rival, Mitt Romney. Santorum’s recent success in public opinion polls and Republican contests in Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri seem to be based upon the former Pennsylvania senator’s appeal to evangelicals and social conservatives. In recent weeks, Santorum has generated considerable attention and controversy with his comments on social issues such as contraception, prenatal and health care, public education, and global warming. To a great extent, Santorum is simply applying a Republican a tactic which has been effective since the Reagan years—appeal to the so-called Reagan working-class Democrats in the Midwest who may be so swayed by social issues that they will vote against their own economic interest. It is a phenomenon well described by Thomas Frank in What’s the Matter with Kansas? (2004). The conventional wisdom in 2012 seems to be such tactics will not work in the midst of the nation’s greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression  (although the economy appears poised for a comeback).

The Expansion and Transformation of NATO ... The Real Clinton Doctrine

by Lee Ruddin

William Jefferson Clinton is the 16th presidential profile in the American Experience series to be broadcast on PBS. The president programs have, to date, won a litany of honors including Emmys, Peabodys and DuPont-Columbia Journalism Awards. They have been particularly well-received for highlighting the contradictory nature of the commanders-in-chief. Previous installments include FDR ("a man who could not walk [that] led a crippled country"), Truman (a self-proclaimed "sissy" who dropped the A-bomb), LBJ (an individual who lived a "Jekyll and Hyde existence"), Nixon (a politician who "rose to power as a crusader against communism only to make his most lasting mark as building bridges to China and the Soviet Union"), Carter (a personality comprised of "hubris arrogance [as well as] Christian humbleness"), Reagan (a chief executive who was "ideological in his rhetoric yet pragmatic in his actions") and Bush ("an emotive … emotional leader [who] refused to show his emotions").

Washington Weathered a Terrible Economy and Great Power Rivalry Before ... in 1842

by Alasdair Roberts

On March 9, 1842, a young Charles Dickens arrived in Washington D.C. He was lionized in the city, as he had been everywhere since landing in Boston seven weeks earlier.  Senators William C. Rives of Virginia and Nathanial P. Tallmadge of New York gave him a personal tour of the Capitol. Former president John Quincy Adams entertained him on a Sunday afternoon. President John Tyler honored him at a White House levee. "Mr. Dickens receives the best hospitalities in Washington," the Alexandria Gazette reported on March 17, "and is delighted with almost everything that he sees in our country."

"Obamacare": A History of the Most Effective Scareword in Politics

by Robert Brent Toplin

When Republican candidates for president confronted each other in several televised debates in late 2011 and early 2012, they frequently criticized “Obamacare.” Those candidates did not say much in detail about the Affordable Care Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2010. Brief mention of Obamacare served adequately to communicate their disgust withthe Democrats’ plan for health reform. Sometimes those GOP candidates attacked one of their own, speaking contemptuously about “Romneycare.” That single term implied sharp criticism of the mandated health insurance program that Mitt Romney established when he was governor of Massachusetts. Why do Republicans favor this personalized, shorthand approach to attacking health care reform? Why do they often connect Obama’s name in their references to health care legislation?

The Forgotten Bomb: Interview with Documentary Producer Craig Collie on the Destruction of Nagasaki

by Robin Lindley

Kokura’s luck: Avoiding a catastrophic event you didn’t even know was threatened. Japanese expressionJust three days after Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb attack in history, an American B-29 dropped a second nuclear device on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, incinerating a large area of the city and killing an estimated 80,000 people.           If there is such a thing, the bombing of Nagasaki was a tragedy of errors. The original target of the second atomic bomb was the arms manufacturing city of Kokura but bad weather and mechanical failure saved Kokura and, rather than dropping the $2 billion bomb in ocean, the B-29 “Bockscar” flew onto and destroyed its secondary target, Nagasaki. That bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” was the first  plutonium weapon in history, made from material produced at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.

Santorum and Romney Were Wrong on the Bailouts -- But George W. Bush Wasn't

by Robert Brent Toplin

When campaigning in Michigan recently, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum criticized President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican, for supporting the bailout of ailing banks and auto companies during the recent financial crisis. “President Bush set a precedent,” Santorum complained, “and it was the wrong precedent.” Mitt Romney agreed with Santorum’s criticism of federal loans to auto companies, but he disagreed on the question of aid for Wall Street. Romney supported President Bush’s efforts to rescue large banks.Many decisions by President George W. Bush deserve criticism (take your pick: a questionable rationale for war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich that turned federal surpluses into deficits, or policies promoting de-regulation that allowed reckless speculation). But George W. Bush’s stance on bailouts is not one of those major shortcomings. By endorsing strong federal intervention in an emergency, President Bush helped to prevent the U.S. economy from going over a cliff.