Recently Published

Hillary's First Hundred Days Promise

by Bob Miller

After watching the Democratic candidates debate, the nineteenth such contest in the long hard slog towards the coveted nomination, I was struck by an overwhelming sense of irony by one of Hillary Clinton’s responses concerning immigration reform. Clinton dropped the f-bomb. No, not the four letter cheer made popular by Country Joe and the Fish during Clinton’s formative years during the sixties. Rather, she promised to provide a “pathway to legalization” for illegal im

How to Game a Presidential Legacy

by Joseph Wheelan

Someday soon, unless we stand upon our First Amendment rights and demand government transparency, a president’s legacy may depend not on actual accomplishments and leadership, but on the adroit release and suppression of certain presidential papers. We all know, more or less, what a president did, but not always why or how — the answers to which may determine a president’s place in history.

Lincoln's Generation Also Faced Crises Involving Religion and Terrorism

by Vernon Burton

The problems of the nineteenth century parallel some of our own. Then, as now, America confronted terrorism and religious fanaticism. Then, as now, America conducted a war and engaged in occupation and nation-building. Religious zeal in the nineteenth century strongly influenced events, a fact that deserves underscoring, particularly when we see how the extremes of religion are currently influencing the world (jihadists flying jets into the World Trade Center) and our own U.S. political p

Why Liberals Are Weak When Faced with Fundamentalism

by James Simpson

Liberal intellectuals recoil from the obvious manifestations of scriptural fundamentalism, yet they continue to admire the very culture that produced it. The inheritors of the Enlightenment, they trace thei

Russia – Again America’s “Dark Twin”?

by David S. Foglesong

After years of ambivalence about post-Soviet Russia, many Americans appear to be reverting to the historic habit of treating Russia as America’s shadow self and

Clintonites Need to Realize the Left Won the Debates of the 1960s

by James Livingston

Last time out on this limb, I ended by saying that the Obama campaign performs a political sensibility—an attitude toward history—that adjourns the culture wars by assuming the Left won the struggles conducted in, or inherited from, the 1960s. This campaign assumes, in other words, that the New Left has become the mainstream of American politics. It assumes accordingly that the New Right has always been a marginal, insurgent movement

A Christian Nation?

by Carol V. Hamilton

Like Franklin, Jefferson rejected Calvinism.

Why DC's Gun Law Is Unconstitutional

by David E. Young

Historical arguments about American bills of rights are major points of discussion in the District of Columbia vs Heller case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue is exactly what the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means and whether it was proper for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District o

Should the Candidates Be Talking More About History?

by Alexander Heffner

At the National Book Festival this past August, Michael Beschloss, an American presidential biographer and award-winning historian, urged the nation to choose a president with historical knowledge—a task he suggests the electorate has ignored in the past two presidential campaigns.In a Q&A session after presenting his new book Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, a member of the audience asked Beschloss if he could “expound” on

An Obama Supporter Speaks Out

by Daniel Herman

I write in pique. I have been subjecting myself to the recent spate of columns that decry an irrational "anti-Hillary" campaign by Obama supporters. On HNN, there was Rick Shenkman 's POTUS blog, which told us that Obama supporters are nearing fanaticism in their hatred of Hillary, and are threatening to boycott her should she be the nominee. There is also Deborah Lipstadt's p

The Great Danger If Russia Stays on the Path It's On

by Andreas Umland

The roots of Russia’s currently rising nationalism are threefold: pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. The idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” i.e. of a special Russian mission in world history, goes back several centuries. Russian nationalism had been – contrary to what many in the West believed – an important element of Soviet ideology ever since the 1930s. Like in the early 19th century when Moscow’s so-called Slavophiles applied German nativist thought t

Both Germany and Russia Are Reinventing Their Pasts

by Dr. Dmitry Shlapentokh

Recently, two European nations have emerged from a long period of national humiliation and, in a way, subservient position toward the USA: Germany and Russia. In both instances, there is a new sense of stability in the minds of the countries’ elite, and this required a new vision of the past. In this construction of the past, the subtle anti-Americanism is present. It manifests itself in the assumption that regardless of all mistakes of the past, neither Germany nor Russia is an exception.

A Truly Pointless War ... The War of 1812

by Jon Latimer

In their Beginner’s Guide to Canadian Humour, Lynne Stokes and Pamela Chichinskas list 15 reasons why ‘We Can’t Stand Americans.’ Reason number 8 is: ‘Because they don’t know the first thing about Canada, like who our Prime Minister is - or even that we have a Prime Minister, or a different currency. And they glaze over if we try to explain them.’

MLK Was Both a Talker and a Doer, Hillary

by Harvard Sitkoff

According to Hillary Clinton’s version of history, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dreamer, a talker (much as she labels Barack Obama), and the person really responsible for civil rights progress in the 1960s

We Cannot Afford to Neglect Nuclear Disarmament

by William Lambers

Russia's plans for new nuclear weapons should serve as a wake-up call for the United States. The last thing Americans want to see are nuclear weapons popping up anywhere around the globe. We must regain the initiative toward nuclear disarmament by opening talks on additional bilateral nuclear arms reductions with Russia.During the Cold War, nuclear disarmament was a long-term goal of U.S. foreign policy. President Reagan called for "the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons

When Will We Be Ready for the Real Harriet Tubman?

by Milton C. Sernett

In the late 1930s, Earl Conrad, the young crusading journalist who thought of himself as a neo-abolitionist, nearly broke his health and his pocketbook trying to find a publisher for his book manuscript about Harriet Tubman. How times have changed.

Does Hillary Clinton Really Have More Experience than Barack Obama?

by T. Alissa Warters and Scott Kaufman

For the past few months of the Democratic race for the 2008 presidential nomination, the candidates have focused on two issues: experience and change. It is hard to assess whether any of them will promote change if elected, as none of them have yet to win the presidency, let alone the party nomination. On the matter of experience, Hillary Clinton claims that she should be the nominee because she has more government service than her top rival, Barack Obama. Here, though, there is a problem: what

Is Globalization Here to Stay? (Maybe, Maybe Not)

by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke

To commentators such as Thomas Friedman, today’s globalization is a largely technological phenomenon. Once learned, new technologies ar

The Hidden-Hand Style of Mamie Eisenhower

by Marilyn Holt

Speculating on what sort of first lady Mamie Eisenhower would be, a 1952 Life magazine article decided that Mrs. Eisenhower would have “the highly commendab

Welcome Back to American Politics, LBJ!

by Randall B. Woods

Last month Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first Democratic candidate for the presidency to invoke the name of Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ, the Great Society,