Recently Published

Iran’s Political Motivation For Ridiculing the Holocaust Again

by Richard L. Cravatts

No doubt inspired by the perverse Holocaust “conference” sponsored two years ago by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, student members of the Basij militia have just published a book of cartoons mocking and minimizing the Shoah, just in time for a festive distribution at a Tehran rally for Al-Quds Day. The annual hate-fest glorifies the Palestinian cause and is an opportunity for Iranians to wildly denounce Israel and America and bemoan the continuing presence of Jews in Jerusalem

The Bankruptcy of Militant Free Market Ideology

by Robert Brent Toplin

Now that many economists and political leaders are denouncing free market extremism and calling for greater regulation, pundits have been trying to identify the people who were most influential in taking Americans down

The Real West Is an Urban West

by Carl Abbott

Sarah Palin knows how to hunt wolves. She can skin a moose. She lives way up there on America's last frontier. So, we might think, here's a national candidate who represents the"real" American West, not its Hollywood imitation. That's a tempting image, but it's flat out wrong. Nancy Pelosi, fast-talking, hard-edged urbanite from San Francisco, is a much better stand-in for the real American West. So is the sister team of Linda Sanchez and Loretta Sanchez, who represent p

We Could Better Integrate New Immigrants into American Society -- And Should

by Ian Reifowitz

"Americanization means becoming a part of the polity -- becoming one of us.”--Barbara Jordan Levels of immigration not seen for a century have created a feeling among native-born Americans that they have lost control of what American society and culture will look like, and of what American national identity will consist. We need to alleviate these anxieties in order to mitigate the difficulties that new arrivals face. Our society has to devote more resources both to cul

Ed Koch's Lesson for Today’s Mortgage Crisis

by Jonathan Soffer

With the takeover of  defaulted mortgages by the government, the American people, like John McCain, now have no idea of how many homes they own.   The lessons of Mayor Ed Koch’s ten year housing plan suggest that this crisis can be turned into an opportunity. As Barack Obama has insisted, Main Street must be helped along with Wall Street. Koch’s plan provides one successful precedent. We, the American people, are going to own thousands of delinquent mortgages

The Vice Presidency Should Not Be an Accident Waiting to Happen

by Christopher Bates

John Adams, while serving as the nation's first vice president, characterized his job as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." Woodrow Wilson's vice president, Thomas Marshall, liked to joke that "once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president -- and nothing was ever heard from either of them again." John Nance Garner, a two-term veep, was even more blunt, describing t

Can Sarah Palin Say the Pledge of Allegiance in Good Conscience?

by Daniel Herman

Can Sarah Palin say the Pledge of Allegiance in good faith? Can she take the Oath of Office in good faith? No, she can’t, as I’ll explain below.Remember when in 2003 Michael Savage said he'd like to rip “traitors” from their cars and beat them senseless because they exercised their constitutional right to speak against the war? Unlike Savage, I want to talk about real traitors: enemies to the Constitution.As you HNN readers probably

Why Vice Presidential Nominees Matter

by Leo P. Ribuffo

Despite the Sarah Palin phenomenon, whatever it may ultimately yield, commentators continue to declare that vice presidential nominees rarely affect the outcome of presidential elections.  The truth of this axiom depends on the meaning of the word rarely.  Good choices, bad choices, and  missed choices--usually in combination--have influenced as many as five of the presidential elections since 1960.  And "rarely" might be changed to "frequently" if we r

Old Andy Jackson Would Understand John McCain. Do You?

by Robert Elder

Honor is making a comeback in our national political discourse.  A recent Time article proposed honor as the best way to understand what makes John McCain tick, while the Obama campaign criticized a recent McCain television ad in language that produced the eye-catching headline, “Obama aide questions McCain’s honor.”

Is It Really Wise to Expand the FBI's Investigative Techniques?

by Douglas Charles

According to recent reporting by the Washington Post, in October 2008 FBI officials plan to expand their arsenal of investigative tools in the fields of crime detection, intelligence collect

Can Historians Be Helpful in Addressing the Climate Crisis?

by Steven A. Leibo

So there I was, sometime around January 2005 finishing up one of the very frequent public talks I often give on international issues when an audience member walked up to me. It had been a good discussion of critical challenges from Iraq and China to Globalization and Global Warming and I was feeling pretty positive when the guy ever so politely said “I much appreciated your talk but your explanation that some of the rising ocean levels we have seen of late comes from heated waters taking

The Parallel with 1929 We Ignore at Our Peril

by Robert Brent Toplin

With markets teetering at the abyss, the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the federal government's rescue of faltering behemoths like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, some Americans are looking at the history of the 1930s in search of clues to the causes of the Great Depression. They want to know what went wrong in the past so they can make more educated judgments about what needs to be done to improve conditions in the present. Unfortunately, answers cannot be identified wi

Sarah Palin and the Politics of the Irrational

by Joseph Palermo

In The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby writes: "If Bush's election was not a measure of conscious anti-intellectualism on the part of voters, it was certainly a measure of the public's indifference to demonstrable mental acuity and knowledge as standards for the presidency." (p. 285) In recent years, presidential races have become highly personalized media events. They focus voters' short attention spans on the individuals who are running, rather than on the pol

A New Cold War in the Caribbean?

by Nikolas Kozloff

When Venezuela's Hugo Chávez throws one of his rhetorical bombs, we learn something about the failure of U.S. foreign policy. Recently, "Go ahead and squeal," he taunted us. The cause of his outburst? Likely American protests in the future over his moves to hold joint exercises in the Caribbean with the Russian navy. No one likes Chávez's loopy Cold-War language, but he's onto something with his nutty words: the way the Bush administration has compromised Amer

Before Palin, Before Ferrarro, There Was Charlotta Spears Bass

by Cynthia King

Though partisans continue to debate the merits and demerits of Sarah Palin’s candidacy, the fact is that she is the first female vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party. This is also true of Geraldine Ferrarro for the Democratic Party in 1984. But even Ferrarro cannot lay claim to being the first female vice presidential nominee on the national ballot. That honor goes to Charlotta Spears Bass who ran for Vice President of the United States on the Progressive Party ticket i

Just How Secretive Was the Bush Administration?

by James P. Pfiffner

The Bush administration, in addition to its over-classification of documents, has undertaken more policies in secret than any administration in recent memo

A Biographer Explains Why He Thinks Another Biography of Jefferson Was in Order

by Kevin J. Hayes

As my recent biography, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Oxford University Press, 2008), neared completion,

Why Public Housing Is Viable

by Nicholas Dagen Bloom

The mere mention of public housing to most Americans summons a host of negative images: welfare mothers, gun violence, drugs, and forlorn buildings. Among

Who Was Uncle Sam? And Why Did He Want "You"?

by Christopher Capozzola

Sitting in his Manhattan studio on a summer day in 1916, James Montgomery Flagg took off his glasses, looked in the mirror, and saw there the image of

Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity

by Gary Cross

The old always seem to blame the young for the downfall of civilization.