Roundup: Talking About History
This is where we excerpt articles about history that appear in the media. Among the subjects included on this page are: anniversaries of historical events, legacies of presidents, cutting-edge research, and historical disputes.
SOURCE: LA Times (5-23-10)
[Craig Fehrman is an English PhD student at Yale and is working on a book about presidents and their books.
In the spring of 1949, Eleanor Roosevelt turned in the manuscript for her second memoir — this one on the White House years — to her editors at Ladies' Home Journal. "You have written this too hastily," came the reply, "as though you were composing it on a bicycle while pedaling your way to a fire."
Roosevelt's editors asked her to revise the manuscript with the help of a ghostwriter, but she refused. "I would have felt the book wasn't mine," she said. She ended up selling her book's serial rights to the Journal's biggest rival, McCall's, for $150,000. "This I Remember" became a bestseller, and provided McCall's with a nice boost in its battle for the hearts and souls of America's housewives.
This might seem like a story designed to rally supporters of serious writing and thinking: A political figure...
In the spring of 1949, Eleanor Roosevelt turned in the manuscript for her second memoir — this one on the White House years — to her editors at Ladies' Home Journal. "You have written this too hastily," came the reply, "as though you were composing it on a bicycle while pedaling your way to a fire."
Roosevelt's editors asked her to revise the manuscript with the help of a ghostwriter, but she refused. "I would have felt the book wasn't mine," she said. She ended up selling her book's serial rights to the Journal's biggest rival, McCall's, for $150,000. "This I Remember" became a bestseller, and provided McCall's with a nice boost in its battle for the hearts and souls of America's housewives.
This might seem like a story designed to rally supporters of serious writing and thinking: A political figure...
Monday, May 24, 2010 - 17:02
Comments
SOURCE: City Journal (5-18-10)
[Claire Berlinski, a contributing editor of City Journal, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.]
In the latest issue of City Journal, I published a story about a large cache of Soviet-era documents smuggled out of Russia by Pavel Stroilov, a Russian researcher now exiled in London, and a similar collection of smuggled documents held by the former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. I wrote that the world was incurious about these papers; this, I argued, was symptomatic of a dangerous indifference to the history and horrors of Communism.
The historian Ron Radosh issued a disgruntled response. My piece, he wrote, was overstated, unjust, slanderous, weak, lazy, irresponsible, poorly informed, and misleading. (I assume he otherwise liked it.)...
I ask readers to go back and read carefully both my article and Ronald Radosh’s reply. Having done so, they will see that...
In the latest issue of City Journal, I published a story about a large cache of Soviet-era documents smuggled out of Russia by Pavel Stroilov, a Russian researcher now exiled in London, and a similar collection of smuggled documents held by the former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. I wrote that the world was incurious about these papers; this, I argued, was symptomatic of a dangerous indifference to the history and horrors of Communism.
The historian Ron Radosh issued a disgruntled response. My piece, he wrote, was overstated, unjust, slanderous, weak, lazy, irresponsible, poorly informed, and misleading. (I assume he otherwise liked it.)...
I ask readers to go back and read carefully both my article and Ronald Radosh’s reply. Having done so, they will see that...
Sunday, May 23, 2010 - 15:41
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune (5-21-10)
[Paul Kennedy is a professor of history and director of International Security Studies at Yale University and author of “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”]
Some 70 years ago, on the evening of May 10, 1940, a controversial British politician entered Buckingham Palace for an audience with King George VI. The king asked him to become prime minister and to form a government. The politician then left to carry out his new job. His name was Winston Churchill.
To this day, that change in leadership — with the appeaser Neville Chamberlain shuttling off the stage — has been regarded as decisive. The dishonest decade of the 1930s had gone; now came “blood, sweat, toil and tears” — and an eventual, hard-fought victory. If anything proved Thomas Carlyle’s argument about the importance of the Great Man in history, then here it was. There was also ample contemporary evidence for this leader-centered theory in the form of Hitler (who adored Carlyle and was still...
Some 70 years ago, on the evening of May 10, 1940, a controversial British politician entered Buckingham Palace for an audience with King George VI. The king asked him to become prime minister and to form a government. The politician then left to carry out his new job. His name was Winston Churchill.
To this day, that change in leadership — with the appeaser Neville Chamberlain shuttling off the stage — has been regarded as decisive. The dishonest decade of the 1930s had gone; now came “blood, sweat, toil and tears” — and an eventual, hard-fought victory. If anything proved Thomas Carlyle’s argument about the importance of the Great Man in history, then here it was. There was also ample contemporary evidence for this leader-centered theory in the form of Hitler (who adored Carlyle and was still...
Friday, May 21, 2010 - 15:13
SOURCE: National Review Online (5-17-10)
[Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com.]
If you need a quick primer on the birds and the bees, on how a culture has been misled, and on why Carrie and her friends from yet another Sex and the City movie have had miserable, not-so-pretty lives, the woman once declared “Most Desired Woman” by Playboy can help you out.
The actress has written a book, Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, which might just stand out on bookstore shelves. We need it to!
In an article that coincided with her book’s launch, she wrote: “Margaret Sanger opened the first American family-planning clinic in 1916, and nothing would be the same again. Since then the growing proliferation of birth-control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values.”...
In an otherwise largely celebratory forum on the pill at CNN’s...
If you need a quick primer on the birds and the bees, on how a culture has been misled, and on why Carrie and her friends from yet another Sex and the City movie have had miserable, not-so-pretty lives, the woman once declared “Most Desired Woman” by Playboy can help you out.
The actress has written a book, Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, which might just stand out on bookstore shelves. We need it to!
In an article that coincided with her book’s launch, she wrote: “Margaret Sanger opened the first American family-planning clinic in 1916, and nothing would be the same again. Since then the growing proliferation of birth-control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values.”...
In an otherwise largely celebratory forum on the pill at CNN’s...
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - 11:41
SOURCE: Salon.com (5-18-10)
[Cynthia Dagnal-Myron has a blog on openSalon.]
As someone who's lived in Arizona for over 20 years now, I'm not shocked by the recent immigration law. Partly that's because I know how common profiling is here on the border. It's not controversial in these parts; it's just how it is. It's a practice as old as, well, Geronimo.
But I'm also not shocked to see the supposed resurgence of racism in America -- aimed, many feel, at Hispanics rather than African-Americans. Many people of color my age, who grew up constantly aware that they were in real danger, every single day of their lives, are difficult to shock. We've lived through so many varieties of racism that we're slightly amused anyone really fell for that "post-racial" America stuff being bandied about during the Obama campaign. That bubble burst pretty quick, huh?
Chris Rock once quipped that he saw America as that rich uncle who put you through college after he'd spent years...
As someone who's lived in Arizona for over 20 years now, I'm not shocked by the recent immigration law. Partly that's because I know how common profiling is here on the border. It's not controversial in these parts; it's just how it is. It's a practice as old as, well, Geronimo.
But I'm also not shocked to see the supposed resurgence of racism in America -- aimed, many feel, at Hispanics rather than African-Americans. Many people of color my age, who grew up constantly aware that they were in real danger, every single day of their lives, are difficult to shock. We've lived through so many varieties of racism that we're slightly amused anyone really fell for that "post-racial" America stuff being bandied about during the Obama campaign. That bubble burst pretty quick, huh?
Chris Rock once quipped that he saw America as that rich uncle who put you through college after he'd spent years...
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - 11:11
SOURCE: The City Journal (5-1-10)
[Claire Berlinski, a contributing editor of City Journal, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.]
In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer...
In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer...
Saturday, May 15, 2010 - 16:26
SOURCE: WaPo (5-14-10)
[Eugene Robinson writes a column for the Washington Post.]
At least we don't have to pretend anymore. Arizona's passing of that mean-spirited immigration law wasn't about high-minded principle or the need to maintain public order. Apparently, it was all about putting Latinos in their place.
It's hard to reach any other conclusion given the state's latest swipe at Latinos. On Tuesday, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a measure making it illegal for any course in the public schools to "advocate ethnic solidarity." Arizona's top education official, Tom Horne, fought for the new law as a weapon against a program in Tucson that teaches Mexican American students about their history and culture.
Horne claims the Tucson classes teach "ethnic chauvinism." He has complained that young Mexican Americans are falsely being led to believe that they belong to an oppressed minority. The way to dispel that notion, it seems, is to pass oppressive new...
At least we don't have to pretend anymore. Arizona's passing of that mean-spirited immigration law wasn't about high-minded principle or the need to maintain public order. Apparently, it was all about putting Latinos in their place.
It's hard to reach any other conclusion given the state's latest swipe at Latinos. On Tuesday, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a measure making it illegal for any course in the public schools to "advocate ethnic solidarity." Arizona's top education official, Tom Horne, fought for the new law as a weapon against a program in Tucson that teaches Mexican American students about their history and culture.
Horne claims the Tucson classes teach "ethnic chauvinism." He has complained that young Mexican Americans are falsely being led to believe that they belong to an oppressed minority. The way to dispel that notion, it seems, is to pass oppressive new...
Friday, May 14, 2010 - 09:46
SOURCE: TownHall.com (5-14-10)
[Linda Chavez is chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics]
Most ethnic studies programs in public schools are at best a waste of taxpayer money, and at worst racially and ethnically divisive indoctrination. But the goal shouldn't be just getting rid of these programs, which a controversial new bill passed by the Arizona legislature attempts to do, but ensuring that public schools give all students a firm grounding in American history, culture, and government.
The impetus for the Arizona bill is a program used in the Tucson Unified School District that provides ethnic studies courses for Hispanics, blacks, Asians, and Native Americans. Critics of the program claim that the courses, especially those aimed at Mexican Americans, have become forums for political propaganda. And the school district's own website provides evidence the critics are right.
Among...
Most ethnic studies programs in public schools are at best a waste of taxpayer money, and at worst racially and ethnically divisive indoctrination. But the goal shouldn't be just getting rid of these programs, which a controversial new bill passed by the Arizona legislature attempts to do, but ensuring that public schools give all students a firm grounding in American history, culture, and government.
The impetus for the Arizona bill is a program used in the Tucson Unified School District that provides ethnic studies courses for Hispanics, blacks, Asians, and Native Americans. Critics of the program claim that the courses, especially those aimed at Mexican Americans, have become forums for political propaganda. And the school district's own website provides evidence the critics are right.
Among...
Friday, May 14, 2010 - 09:39
SOURCE: Commentary (5-1-10)
[John Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary.]
I live in a small city in the midst of a great city. It is the same one in which I grew up four decades ago, and its buildings and landmarks and topography are almost entirely unchanged. Usually the small cities in America that never change are the ones whose best days came half a century or more ago and are now literally rotting away before your eyes, their once-handsome houses mottling, their fences akimbo, their storefronts boarded, their grass untended, their gas stations abandoned on windblown corners. My small city could have been one of those static, increasingly impoverished, blighted places. Indeed, everything suggested it would be.
Nostalgia can be a treacherous mistress, because she glamorizes the past and downgrades the present in a way that threatens to make them both intolerable. Since I live only a mile from where I was born and raised, with only slight changes to the visual landscape, I find myself...
I live in a small city in the midst of a great city. It is the same one in which I grew up four decades ago, and its buildings and landmarks and topography are almost entirely unchanged. Usually the small cities in America that never change are the ones whose best days came half a century or more ago and are now literally rotting away before your eyes, their once-handsome houses mottling, their fences akimbo, their storefronts boarded, their grass untended, their gas stations abandoned on windblown corners. My small city could have been one of those static, increasingly impoverished, blighted places. Indeed, everything suggested it would be.
Nostalgia can be a treacherous mistress, because she glamorizes the past and downgrades the present in a way that threatens to make them both intolerable. Since I live only a mile from where I was born and raised, with only slight changes to the visual landscape, I find myself...
Thursday, May 13, 2010 - 12:24
SOURCE: CS Monitor (5-10-10)
[Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics, was the intellectual guru behind New Labour’s “Third Way” that brought Tony Blair to power.]
The era of Labour hegemony is over. How should we assess its legacy?
It is conventional these days to disparage the record of Labour in government over the past 13 years. Even quite supportive observers tend to argue that little of substance has been achieved. For the more swingeing critics, Labour in power – Labour as New Labour – has been more than a disappointment; it has been a disaster. The party led an onslaught on civil liberties, betrayed leftist ideals, failed to make any impact on inequality and, worst of all, embarked upon a calamitous war in Iraq.
New Labour promised a New Dawn and many feel betrayed. I’m not without sympathy for these criticisms. Yet one can mount a robust defense of many of Labour’s core policies, and a balanced assessment is needed if an effective future...
The era of Labour hegemony is over. How should we assess its legacy?
It is conventional these days to disparage the record of Labour in government over the past 13 years. Even quite supportive observers tend to argue that little of substance has been achieved. For the more swingeing critics, Labour in power – Labour as New Labour – has been more than a disappointment; it has been a disaster. The party led an onslaught on civil liberties, betrayed leftist ideals, failed to make any impact on inequality and, worst of all, embarked upon a calamitous war in Iraq.
New Labour promised a New Dawn and many feel betrayed. I’m not without sympathy for these criticisms. Yet one can mount a robust defense of many of Labour’s core policies, and a balanced assessment is needed if an effective future...
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - 08:00
SOURCE: Foreign Policy (5-11-10)
[Julia Ioffe is a writer living in Moscow.]
On Victory Day in Moscow, the city government closed off the main thoroughfares of the city and marched tanks and artillery through the streets. Nearly a million Russians packed in to see the old T-34s and the impossibly massive Iskander missiles trundle past. MiGs and helicopter gunships roared overhead. It was sunny, it was hot; people were happy, orderly. They waved Russian flags and cheered and whistled. The soldiers in the tanks waved back and blew kisses. One of them snapped pictures with his phone.
And then came the armored personnel vehicle carrying the red banner of Lenin. It rolled right past a kid in the crowd waving the old Soviet flag, and it made two pensioners very happy. "We want the Soviet Union to come back," one of them growled at me. She said she was a member of the communist party -- the old one, not the current not-really-communist one. "The former republics are finally realizing...
On Victory Day in Moscow, the city government closed off the main thoroughfares of the city and marched tanks and artillery through the streets. Nearly a million Russians packed in to see the old T-34s and the impossibly massive Iskander missiles trundle past. MiGs and helicopter gunships roared overhead. It was sunny, it was hot; people were happy, orderly. They waved Russian flags and cheered and whistled. The soldiers in the tanks waved back and blew kisses. One of them snapped pictures with his phone.
And then came the armored personnel vehicle carrying the red banner of Lenin. It rolled right past a kid in the crowd waving the old Soviet flag, and it made two pensioners very happy. "We want the Soviet Union to come back," one of them growled at me. She said she was a member of the communist party -- the old one, not the current not-really-communist one. "The former republics are finally realizing...
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - 07:55
SOURCE: WaPo (5-11-10)
[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the Washington Post.]
Around 1924, the professor seduced his student. He was 35 and married; she was 18 and single. He was an important philosopher, and she was a precocious kid, destined for great things herself. He was to become a Nazi and she was a Jew -- Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. If you could understand them both, as a couple and individually, you would understand the world and all its mysteries. You might also never sleep again.
The Heidegger-Arendt affair is a much-told tale that never loses its attraction for writers. Yet another book has appeared, "Stranger From Abroad" by Daniel Maier-Katkin, which was reviewed, along with a separate book on Heidegger, on the front of Sunday's New York Times Book Review -- a place of honor befitting these two intellectual giants, not to mention their very strange, and in terms of affection, enduring affair. After World War II, Arendt defended Heidegger and resumed...
Around 1924, the professor seduced his student. He was 35 and married; she was 18 and single. He was an important philosopher, and she was a precocious kid, destined for great things herself. He was to become a Nazi and she was a Jew -- Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. If you could understand them both, as a couple and individually, you would understand the world and all its mysteries. You might also never sleep again.
The Heidegger-Arendt affair is a much-told tale that never loses its attraction for writers. Yet another book has appeared, "Stranger From Abroad" by Daniel Maier-Katkin, which was reviewed, along with a separate book on Heidegger, on the front of Sunday's New York Times Book Review -- a place of honor befitting these two intellectual giants, not to mention their very strange, and in terms of affection, enduring affair. After World War II, Arendt defended Heidegger and resumed...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - 18:00
SOURCE: Newsweek (5-10-10)
[Andrew Romano writes for Newsweek.]
In the year and a half since Barack Obama was elected president, Republicans nationwide seem to have given up on the whole governing thing and chosen instead to play a long, rancorous game of "I'm More Conservative Than You Are." They've been playing it in Utah, where incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett—lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 84—lost a primary battle this past weekend. They've been playing it in Florida, where moderate Gov. Charlie Crist was forced last week to abandon his bid for the Republican Senate nomination and run as an independent instead. And they've even been playing it on the national stage, where the RNC recently toyed with the idea of imposing a purity test on potential GOP candidates. Comply with eight of the party's 10 "Reaganite" principles, the thinking went, and you're worthy of funding. Fall short, and you might as well be Leon Trotsky.
Conservatives would claim that the...
In the year and a half since Barack Obama was elected president, Republicans nationwide seem to have given up on the whole governing thing and chosen instead to play a long, rancorous game of "I'm More Conservative Than You Are." They've been playing it in Utah, where incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett—lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 84—lost a primary battle this past weekend. They've been playing it in Florida, where moderate Gov. Charlie Crist was forced last week to abandon his bid for the Republican Senate nomination and run as an independent instead. And they've even been playing it on the national stage, where the RNC recently toyed with the idea of imposing a purity test on potential GOP candidates. Comply with eight of the party's 10 "Reaganite" principles, the thinking went, and you're worthy of funding. Fall short, and you might as well be Leon Trotsky.
Conservatives would claim that the...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - 18:00
SOURCE: Pajamas Media (5-11-10)
[Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer and historian. His sixth book, Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie (Nelson Current, 2006), is available in bookstores. His web site is www.claytoncramer.com.]
When whites say that slavery reparations is a dead issue, that’s not news. When conservative blacks say it, it isn’t news. But when Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says it, you can put a fork in it.
In a remarkably courageous New York Times opinion piece, Gates points out what historians have long known:
The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - 12:35
SOURCE: I.H.T. (5-10-10)
[Thomas Sherlock is a professor of political science at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.]
Over the objections of many Russians, posters bearing Stalin’s image were approved by Moscow’s city government for display during celebrations marking Victory Day in Russia on Sunday. The issue was debated in the weeks leading up to the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, and, in the end, the anti-Stalinists won. Only a few such posters were on display, and they were hardly prominent.
This latest battle over how to remember The Great Patriotic War is part of an ongoing struggle for Russia’s post-Soviet identity. Since 2007, a widely used high school history textbook for teachers, developed by the Kremlin, has openly praised Stalin’s wartime leadership and condemned Allied behavior as perfidious. And in 2009 the Kremlin created a history commission dominated by the security services to counter foreign and domestic arguments that the Soviet Union...
Over the objections of many Russians, posters bearing Stalin’s image were approved by Moscow’s city government for display during celebrations marking Victory Day in Russia on Sunday. The issue was debated in the weeks leading up to the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, and, in the end, the anti-Stalinists won. Only a few such posters were on display, and they were hardly prominent.
This latest battle over how to remember The Great Patriotic War is part of an ongoing struggle for Russia’s post-Soviet identity. Since 2007, a widely used high school history textbook for teachers, developed by the Kremlin, has openly praised Stalin’s wartime leadership and condemned Allied behavior as perfidious. And in 2009 the Kremlin created a history commission dominated by the security services to counter foreign and domestic arguments that the Soviet Union...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - 09:21
SOURCE: LA Times (5-9-10)
[Malcolm Potts, a British obstetrician, is a UC Berkeley professor and has published extensively on contraception.]
Medieval alchemists, and more recently Harry Potter, spent time seeking the Philosopher's Stone. It was thought to be the elixir of life, bestowing long life and perhaps even immortality. Fifty years ago this month, a genuine philosopher's stone was discovered — only it was a small, white, circular tablet called Enovid, the first oral contraceptive.
I knew the biologists who developed "the pill" and the doctors who tested it. In the 1960s, as a young obstetrician in Britain, I began prescribing oral contraceptives. I saw how they gave women a freedom they'd never known. For the first time in history, women could choose if and when to have a child with relative ease. No uncertain rhythm method, no embarrassing interruption of lovemaking to put on a condom. Just a highly effective, easy-to-use method....
So why does the pill...
Medieval alchemists, and more recently Harry Potter, spent time seeking the Philosopher's Stone. It was thought to be the elixir of life, bestowing long life and perhaps even immortality. Fifty years ago this month, a genuine philosopher's stone was discovered — only it was a small, white, circular tablet called Enovid, the first oral contraceptive.
I knew the biologists who developed "the pill" and the doctors who tested it. In the 1960s, as a young obstetrician in Britain, I began prescribing oral contraceptives. I saw how they gave women a freedom they'd never known. For the first time in history, women could choose if and when to have a child with relative ease. No uncertain rhythm method, no embarrassing interruption of lovemaking to put on a condom. Just a highly effective, easy-to-use method....
So why does the pill...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - 08:50
SOURCE: American Heritage (5-3-10)
[Tom Huntington is the Senior Editor of American Heritage Magazine.]
...Two schools of thought exist as to the proper means of restoring an aircraft. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which preserves perhaps the world’s most impressive collection of historic aircraft, “does not restore its aircraft to flying status, because the steps required to make a plane airworthy often eradicate much of its value as an artifact,” says Malcolm Collum, the museum’s chief of conservation. A full-blown restoration to flyable condition, he says, requires replacing original parts with flight-worthy components. “Every time you do that you are reducing the percentage of that airplane that you can define as authentic,” says Collum, and that approach doesn’t suit the Smithsonian’s philosophy of treating each aircraft as a “historic document.”...
At other institutions the goal is to get their airplanes into the air. The Planes of Fame in...
...Two schools of thought exist as to the proper means of restoring an aircraft. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which preserves perhaps the world’s most impressive collection of historic aircraft, “does not restore its aircraft to flying status, because the steps required to make a plane airworthy often eradicate much of its value as an artifact,” says Malcolm Collum, the museum’s chief of conservation. A full-blown restoration to flyable condition, he says, requires replacing original parts with flight-worthy components. “Every time you do that you are reducing the percentage of that airplane that you can define as authentic,” says Collum, and that approach doesn’t suit the Smithsonian’s philosophy of treating each aircraft as a “historic document.”...
At other institutions the goal is to get their airplanes into the air. The Planes of Fame in...
Monday, May 10, 2010 - 15:32
SOURCE: American Thinker (5-10-10)
[Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his recently published The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.]
Seventy years ago, on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He had been warning the world about the dangers of Nazism for almost a decade. He had been warning the world about the dangers of Bolshevism since 1918. By the time Churchill became Prime Minister, the British had seen Nazis overrun Poland, Denmark, and Norway. Churchill was watching helplessly as the German Army routed the combined armies of France, Britain, Holland, and Belgium.
The new prime minister did not just face the fury of Hitler's hordes. Stalin had been a close and effective ally of Hitler since August 1939. Mussolini would quickly pounce and join with Germany against Britain. Japan menaced Commonwealth democracies and British interests in the Pacific. Enemies were everywhere.
...
Seventy years ago, on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He had been warning the world about the dangers of Nazism for almost a decade. He had been warning the world about the dangers of Bolshevism since 1918. By the time Churchill became Prime Minister, the British had seen Nazis overrun Poland, Denmark, and Norway. Churchill was watching helplessly as the German Army routed the combined armies of France, Britain, Holland, and Belgium.
The new prime minister did not just face the fury of Hitler's hordes. Stalin had been a close and effective ally of Hitler since August 1939. Mussolini would quickly pounce and join with Germany against Britain. Japan menaced Commonwealth democracies and British interests in the Pacific. Enemies were everywhere.
...
Monday, May 10, 2010 - 13:56
SOURCE: Truthout (5-8-10)
[Michael Winship is senior writer of PBS' Bill Moyers Journal. Watch online or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.]
I was a freshman at Georgetown University when it happened, 40 years ago on May 4. Most of us didn't know what had taken place until late in the day. We were in class or studying for finals, so hours went by until my friends and I heard the news. On that warm spring Monday, the Ohio National Guard had opened fire on an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University and four students lay dead. Nine others were wounded.
It took a while to sink in. This was the sort of thing that happened in South American dictatorships - student protestors gunned down for speaking out against the government. Not here.
Then I remembered that some of my high school classmates were at Kent State, a campus fewer than 250 miles from my western New York hometown. But I had no phone numbers for them; there...
I was a freshman at Georgetown University when it happened, 40 years ago on May 4. Most of us didn't know what had taken place until late in the day. We were in class or studying for finals, so hours went by until my friends and I heard the news. On that warm spring Monday, the Ohio National Guard had opened fire on an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University and four students lay dead. Nine others were wounded.
It took a while to sink in. This was the sort of thing that happened in South American dictatorships - student protestors gunned down for speaking out against the government. Not here.
Then I remembered that some of my high school classmates were at Kent State, a campus fewer than 250 miles from my western New York hometown. But I had no phone numbers for them; there...
Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 21:27
SOURCE: LA Times (5-7-10)
[Si Liberman is a retired editor of the Asbury Park (N.J.) Sunday Press.]
The explosion of joy had not yet erupted. But there, in the heart of London that night, darkness was strangely absent on one city street. A stream of light illuminated almost an entire city block.
Some happy soul had raised a store window's blackout shade. And for the first time in nearly six years, it was done without fear of inviting an air raid warden's citation or German bombs.
That marvelous lighted scene, foretelling the end of Europe's deadliest period, has stayed with me all these years. It was May 7, 1945.
I was a 20-year-old B-24 bomber radio gunner then and on a three-day pass from the U.S. Army Air Force's base outside of Norwich, a five-hour train ride away. On a London Underground train to Piccadilly Circus, I had spotted a newspaper headline that screamed in thick black letters: "Unconditional Surrender Imminent." The lighted street seemed...
The explosion of joy had not yet erupted. But there, in the heart of London that night, darkness was strangely absent on one city street. A stream of light illuminated almost an entire city block.
Some happy soul had raised a store window's blackout shade. And for the first time in nearly six years, it was done without fear of inviting an air raid warden's citation or German bombs.
That marvelous lighted scene, foretelling the end of Europe's deadliest period, has stayed with me all these years. It was May 7, 1945.
I was a 20-year-old B-24 bomber radio gunner then and on a three-day pass from the U.S. Army Air Force's base outside of Norwich, a five-hour train ride away. On a London Underground train to Piccadilly Circus, I had spotted a newspaper headline that screamed in thick black letters: "Unconditional Surrender Imminent." The lighted street seemed...
Friday, May 7, 2010 - 09:51
