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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.

The Context Behind Hitler's WWI Lovechild

by Julian T. Saltman

Newspapers are abuzz over the news that Adolf Hitler may have fathered a son with a French teenager while serving in the German Army during the First World War. According to the initial story in the French magazine, Le Point, Hitler, while serving in a Bavarian infantry unit near Seboncourt, met a sixteen-year-old French girl named Charlotte Lobjoie. After meeting and becoming friendly, a night of drinking in 1917 led to the conception of a boy, Jean-Marie Loret, who later died in 1985.Whether or not this particular story is true is unclear; there is certainly a tremendous amount of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence to support the possibility, but the picture is still murky. What is perfectly clear, however, is that such incidents happened frequently during the First World War, and are an important part of the war’s lasting resonance.

A Brief History of the War Formerly Known As The Global War On Terror

by Andrew J. Bacevich

With the United States now well into the second decade of what the Pentagon has styled an “era of persistent conflict,” the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism (unofficial acronym WFKATGWOT) appears increasingly fragmented and diffuse. Without achieving victory, yet unwilling to acknowledge failure, the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq. It is trying to leave Afghanistan, where events seem equally unlikely to yield a happy outcome. 

Western Trailblazers of the Atomic Age and Beyond: Interview with John Findley and Bruce Hevly

by Robin Lindley

The strong man with the dagger is followed by  the weak man with the sponge. —Lord ActonDuring the Second World War, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on the banks of the Columbia River in south central Washington State attracted thousands of workers to the desolate and sparsely populated area.  Few of the workers knew the aim of the Hanford project until an atomic bomb fueled with Hanford-produced plutonium incinerated the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, and hastened the end of the war.

How to Think About Corporate Personhood, Part II

by James Livingston

I Last time out I ended on a skeptical note—I had begun to doubt my own deployment of James Madison’s formative distinction between the rights of persons and the rights of property. I concluded that the Santa Clara decision of 1886 conflated these “two cardinal objects of Government,” as Madison called them, and thus had adjourned the debate he had designed to trouble congressional decision-making—the debate he thought would prolong the process of majority formation and prevent the propertied oligarchies that had destroyed the ancient republics by ignoring the rights of persons. After Santa Clara, I suggested, the rights of persons and the rights of property couldn’t be distinguished because the Supreme Court had designated corporations persons whose property was protected by the substantive due process of the 14th Amendment. 

The BBC’s "Alternative Honors List"

by Toby Harper

The British government recently released the names of 287 dead people who had, between 1951 and 1999, declined honors. This was not a voluntary choice on Whitehall’s part. The BBC asked the government to release the information through a Freedom of Information request, and the Cabinet Office was reluctantly obliged to cede. Various news outlets in Britain and abroad commented on the list (the New York Times featured the story), pointing out that various famous people, such as C.S. Lewis, L.S. Lowry and Roald Dahl, had at one point or another declined an honor from the British government.

Yemen's Instability Could Be Fixed by Food Aid

by William Lambers

Yemen is in the midst of a humanitarian disaster and little is being done to heed the warnings. Already the poorest country in the Middle East, Yemen has child malnutrition rates that rival famine-ravaged Somalia.Maria Calivis, regional director of UNICEF says, “This year alone, half a million children in Yemen are likely to die from malnutrition or to suffer lifelong physical and cognitive consequences resulting from malnutrition if we don’t take action. Malnutrition is preventable. And, therefore, inaction is unconscionable.”This level of suffering, on top of political instability,  has the potential to plunge the country into complete chaos, a chilling prospect considering al Qaeda's presence there.  

Why I Still Like Ike

by William Astore

The ongoing controversy over the national memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower provides us with an opportunity to recall Ike's legacy and his deeper meaning to America. Ike was of course a national hero, the supreme allied commander who led the assault at D-Day on June 6, 1944 and who later served as president during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. His legacies are many and profound, from ending the Korean War to the interstate highway system that bears his name to advancing civil rights to creating the space program to the establishment of the department of health, education and welfare.As important as Ike's deeds were to our country, in some way his words were (and are) even more important, especially in this time of constant war and bloated budgets for "defense" and our burgeoning trade in deadly weaponry.

Gingrich and Romney: Right and Wrong on Space Travel

by Jonathan Coopersmith

When Newt Gingrich proclaimed that the United States should establish a base on the moon, he was right: We need a major inspirational goal for space exploration. When Mitt Romney attacked Gingrich's proposal as failing the rational business test, he was right, too: The cost would be enormous. But what neither presidential candidate discussed were the reasons why space travel is so costly or how those costs might be reduced.  The question both men should have asked was, "Why, after 55 years of launching rockets, does it still cost so much to reach orbit?" Launching a satellite today costs approximately $10,000 a pound, or tens of millions for a heavy satellite. That high cost, not bureaucratic timidity, is why fewer than 600 people—the number of passengers on one Airbus 380—have orbited the earth since 1961. Space travel cannot become cheap until the age of rocketry is replaced by an age of new propulsion technology—and only government investment can make that happen.    

Mitt Romney’s Cutting-Edge Middle East Strategy

by Walid Phares

As the U.S. electoral process grinds on and the Republican primary debates fold into state primaries and caucuses, the candidates’ views on national security and foreign policy are being carefully scrutinized by voters who consider them to be crucial components of the total policy package a candidate will carry into the Oval Office. Citizens’ attention is understandably riveted to candidates’ proposals for solving our national economic crisis. And, while there is little doubt that the condition of our economy will weigh heavily in the final outcome of the 2012 election, U.S. national security will undoubtedly play a huge role in the evolution of our national economy for the foreseeable future.

Rediscovering Walt Whitman's Soldiers

by Lenore Barbian, Paul Sledzik, and Jeffrey S. Reznick

It is a remarkable fact that the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) holds thousands of anatomical specimens from soldiers injured during the American Civil War. More remarkable is that four of these specimens originate from soldiers who the poet and essayist Walt Whitman nursed in the wartime hospitals of Washington, D.C. A study published in the January 2012 issue of the Museum History Journal unites these remains with Whitman’s words to yield a new interpretation of individual sacrifice during a time of unprecedented conflict in American history.The impetus for this study followed a reading of Roy Morris’s The Better Angel, in which Morris ties the development of Whitman’s Civil War writings to his experiences of caring for wounded soldiers. Morris’s discussion of these soldiers treated by Whitman and Whitman’s own writings about these soldiers prompted the authors—then curators at the NMHM—to explore the collections for evidence of these soldiers. A search revealed specimens from four soldiers—John Mahay, Oscar Wilbur, Oscar Cunningham, and Frank Irwin—still housed within the museum.

Pity the Poor Billionaire: Interview with Thomas Frank

by David Austin Walsh

Thomas Frank is one of the Left's most strident and articulate voices—the New York Times called him "the thinking person's Michael Moore." A journalist by vocation (he co-founded The Baffler in 1988, wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal from 2008-2010, and currently writes a monthly colum for Harper's Magazine), and historian by training (he earned his PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1994), Frank has become a prolific writer of social and cultural history and criticism. His 2004 book What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America was on the New York Times bestseller list for eighteen weeks and earned him international acclaim.

The Dilemma over Whether to Intervene in Syria

by Juan Cole

Syria’s military continued its brutal assault on neighborhoods of Homs, a center of civil disobedience against the regime, on Thursday, killing over 100 persons, including children.This deployment of military force against civilians who were protesting is a war crime, and part of a pattern that by now amounts to crimes against humanity.The first thing that comes to mind at these horrific images is that something should be done.But what? Sen. John McCain has called for arming the rebels, as has the The New Republic, which appears to be veering again toward neoconservatism.My wise colleague Marc Lynch has raised important questions about the wisdom of this course.I would argue an even stronger case against. Once you flood a country with small and medium arms, it destabilizes it for decades.

The Tortured History between Israel and the Left

by Colin Shindler

Why is the far Left so antagonistic towards Israel? Such fixation is no doubt fuelled to a great degree by the forty-year long settlement drive on the West Bank and the political inanities of a succession of right-wing governments in the country. But its deeper roots lie in the age of decolonization.