Recently Published

The American Family Association Says that the Nazis were Gay—The GOP Needs to Distance Itself from that Craziness

by Jonathan Zimmerman

All of the Republican presidential candidates say that gay people should be prohibited from getting married.  But Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association says that gay people helped bring Nazism to Germany.

American Historical Association:  Pacific Coast Branch (Videos)

This conference was held in Seattle in August 2011.Mom:  The Transformation of MotherhoodRebecca Jo PlantBush's Wars:  Roundtable on Terry Anderson's BookTerry AndersonDavid SchmitzKyle LongleyVietnam

Vietnam: Jessica Elkind

The History News Network recorded this video of Jessica Elkind speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In her talk Ms. Elkind discusses recent Vietnamese interpretations of the Vietnam war. She spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Vietnam: Matthew Masur

The History News Network recorded this video of Matthew Masur speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In his talk he discusses recent changes in interpretations of the Vietnam war. He spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Vietnam: David Schmitz

The History News Network recorded this video of David Schmitz speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In his talk he discusses recent changes in interpretations of the Vietnam war, focusing on Richard Nixon's war. He spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Vietnam: David Anderson

The History News Network recorded this video of David Anderson speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In his talk he discusses recent changes in interpretations of the Vietnam war. He spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Bush's Wars: Kyle Longley

The History News Network recorded this video of Kyle Longley speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. He spoke at a roundtable devoted to the discussion of Terry Anderson's book, Bush's Wars (Oxford University Press).

Bush's Wars: David Schmitz

The History News Network recorded this video of David Schmitz speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. He spoke at a roundtable devoted to the discussion of Terry Anderson's book, Bush's Wars (Oxford University Press).

Bush's Wars: Terry Anderson

The History News Network recorded this video of Terry Anderson speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011.He spoke at a roundtable devoted to the discussion of his book, Bush's Wars (Oxford University Press).

Bill Moyers and Robin Lindley: Continuing the Conversation—The Renowned Journalist on His New Book, His Career, His Brushes with History, and Where We Stand Now

by Robin Lindley

Related Links:  HNN Exclusive: Bill Moyers to Return to TV with a New Series Bill Moyers has been my North Star, in his eloquence, his quiet passion and courage,  and in the way he presents me and millions of others with the ideals of our nation, from our past to our present to our uncertain future.  Always he offers the gift of thoughtfulness and of hope. —Studs Terkel

Neither Bachmann nor Perry is the Serious Candidate the GOP Needs

by Stanley Kutler

Thomas Paine, the celebrated pamphleteer of the American Revolution, never hesitated to speak truth to power, or what he called “Common Sense.” He wrote in 1776 that “there is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”Imagine the blunt-speaking Paine’s response to today’s political doings. “Absurdity” would have been inadequate to describe his reaction to the recent Iowa straw vote for Republican presidential hopefuls and The New York Times’ anointment of Michele Bachmann as a “serious” candidate, one of the three top contenders. Bachmann placed first by less than 200 votes over Ron Paul, who lends enhanced meaning to a “fringe” candidate. The Iowa voters were fed (and wined?) and the various candidates generally paid their registration fees to vote. Where are you, George Carlin, now that we need you?

The UK Riots Show the Bankruptcy of Conservative Policies

by Deepak Tripathi

War came to Britain’s streets two weeks ago in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and other urban centers.  The country has seen protests against the Iraq War, against cuts in pensions for local government employees and teachers, and against dramatic increases in student tuition fees.  The events of recent days, however, have been the worst social unrest in a generation.  They've been a reminder of the 1980s, when urban riots shook British society to its core.

Why the Left Needs Its Koch Brothers

by Richard Striner

It’s time for American liberals to pull out their checkbooks and fund a truly powerful campaign that will challenge the Tea Party people and their sponsors.  Challenge them with old-fashioned economic populism.  Two tremendous and headline-grabbing protest marches should be sponsored very soon by the Left—marches of unemployed Americans holding placards and banners emblazoned with a simple slogan:  “Jobs Now.”Our historical tradition of protest marches on Washington began in 1894, when a wealthy and public-spirited man named Jacob Coxey led an “army” of unemployed Civil War veterans to Grover Cleveland’s Washington, demanding a “Good Roads Bill” that would put all the unemployed veterans who saved their country to work building modern America.Nothing happened.

The Great Tripoli Uprising

by Juan Cole

As dawn broke Sunday in Libya, revolutionaries were telling Al Jazeera Arabic that much of the capital was being taken over by supporters of the February 17 Youth revolt.  Some areas, such as the suburb of Tajoura to the east and districts in the eastern part of the city like Suq al-Juma, Arada, the Mitiga airport, Ben Ashour, Fashloum, and Dahra, were in whole or in part under the control of the revolutionaries.Those who were expecting a long, hard slog of fighters from the Western Mountain region and from Misrata toward the capital over-estimated dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s popularity in his own capital, and did not reckon with the severe shortages of ammunition and fuel afflicting his demoralized security forces, whether the regular army or mercenaries.  Nor did they take into account the steady NATO attrition of his armor and other heavy weapons.

White House Weasel Words in the Middle East

by Daniel Pipes

The White House engaged in two furtive gambits last week that painfully exposed the Obama administration's amateurish, deceitful Middle East-Islamic policies.The first case concerned the thorny issue of Jerusalem's legal status in American law.  In 1947, the United Nations ruled the holy city to be a corpus separatum (Latin for separated body) and not part of any state.  All these years later and despite many changes, U.S. policy holds that Jerusalem is an entity unto itself.  It ignores that in 1949 the Government of Israel made western Jerusalem its capital and in 1980 it declared the whole of Jerusalem to be the capital.  The Executive Branch even ignores U.S. laws from 1995 (requiring a move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem) and 2002 (requiring that U.S. documents recognize Americans born in Jerusalem as being born in Israel).  Instead, it insists that the city's disposition be decided through diplomacy.Challenging this policy, the American parents of Jerusalem-born Menachem Zivotofsky, demanded on his behalf that his birth certificate and his passport list him as having been born in Israel.  When the State Department refused, the parents filed a lawsuit; their case has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

J.H. Plumb Would Be Aghast at Today's Distorted History

by John Willingham

 Born a century ago this month, the late Cambridge historian J. H. Plumb would be dismayed were he alive today to see how a heavily distorted “past” has assumed center stage in American public life in the decade since his death, at the expense of what Plumb characterized as “history.”The influence of the anti-historical past is evident.  The most recent example comes in the person of Texas Governor Rick Perry, now a presidential candidate.  Perry not only comes from a state where the past still dominates history in the public memory, but he is the unabashed champion of the same discredited past that Plumb hoped was indeed passing more than forty years ago, when he wrote one of his most influential books, The Death of the Past, in 1969.

Hiroshima & Nagasaki: 66 Years Later

by Murray Polner

The 66th anniversary of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was approaching and a neighbor, a retired fireman and WWII veteran, asked if I thought the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. He said he did because many American soldiers and marines might have been killed in a land invasion of Japan’s main islands. Okinawa, he said, was bad enough. Invading Japan would have been far worse. In no way was he dismissing the killing of so many civilians but like virtually all Americans at the time he unquestioningly believed the Government’s assertions –obviously not stated in this precise way—that because of Pearl Harbor and the many American deaths occurred while hopskotching across the islands of the Pacific, it was perfectly alright to kill enemy civilians in a war. President Truman’s announcement at the time avoided dealing with the issue when he emphasized that Hiroshima was a military base. Ergo, the city was a legitimate wartime target. He never sought to explain Nagasaki.

Stock Market Crash: What are the Politics Behind It?

by Robert Brent Toplin

Americans are nervous.  Their investments and homes have been losing value.  Good jobs are hard to find.  Each day the news brings more troubling reports about a mounting debt crisis in the USA, credit downgrades by a rating agency, and the vulnerabilities of Greece, Spain, and Italy.  Americans wonder:  How did we get in this mess?Historian Alan Brinkley observed that “economists and historians still have not reached anything close to agreement” when trying to explain the Great Depression, and disputes about causes of the Great Recession are likely to remain as lively.  Nevertheless, history provides some useful clues for tracing causes and effects.Two perspectives are especially helpful. One draws attention to international factors.  The other focuses on actions (and mistakes) made by leaders in Washington.Americans are in the habit of focusing almost exclusively on domestic events when explaining their economic problems.  Yet U.S. businesses are closely integrated with the global economy. One of the principal reasons that federal authorities rushed to save the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2008, was that foreign investors from Japan, Russia, China and other nations had more than $1 trillion in debt issued by those agencies.

How Not To Talk About Financial Panics: New Rules For Pundits

by James Livingston

Herewith a manual of utterance and deportment that might make you sound like you know what you’re talking about when the conversation turns to (a) the stock market (b) and/or the budget debate of the last few weeks and/or (c) the bond rating of the U.S. government as determined by Standard & Poor’s and other rating agencies. These are mainly prohibitions, mind you, mostly don’ts.  I can’t help you if somebody asks how we ought to be thinking about markets, unless you believe, as I do, that we’re living through social, economic, and political change so fundamental that every form of conventional wisdom now feels like an involuntary physical reflex—a spastic, instinctive response to archaic stimuli. 

Conservatives Put Their Faith in the God "Market" ... And It's a God That Can Fail

by Robert S. McElvaine

It is time to revise George Santayana’s famous (and oft-misquoted) dictum, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”What “conservative” (a misnomer if there ever was one) Republicans are doing in the face of the current serious economic problems would fit better with, “Those who willfully deny the past condemn us all to repeat it.”Republican economic philosophy is faith-based, not fact-based.  Their absolute, unquestioning faith is in a deity called the Market, and no matter how many times the evidence shows that faith to be misplaced, they keep insisting on doing the same things.What the faithful in this religion of Marketism accomplished this past week was a rerun of the mistakes that prevented full recovery from the Great Depression and precipitated a renewed and quite severe fall (for which the word “recession” was coined) in 1937.