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: WaPo (2-19-11)
[The writer, a commentator for New America Media, lives in Fresno, Calif.]
Buried in a closet is a suitcase where my mother hides an heirloom from the war. I have seen it only once, by chance when she was reorganizing. It is a traditional Hmong jacket. Instead of being pristine and vibrant like the ones I wear to the Hmong New Year, it is thin, tattered and faded. This is the jacket my mother wore as a girl, growing up in the mountains of Laos. It is what she wore the night her family fled their village in fear of retribution from the Communists following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
Underneath this jacket is another one, also old and ragged. It belonged to my mother's youngest sister. Like many others, my aunt and mother were forced to separate that fateful night. In the final seconds of good-bye, my aunt pulled off her jacket and handed it to my mother to keep in case they never met again. Eventually, they found each other in a refugee camp in Thailand,...
Buried in a closet is a suitcase where my mother hides an heirloom from the war. I have seen it only once, by chance when she was reorganizing. It is a traditional Hmong jacket. Instead of being pristine and vibrant like the ones I wear to the Hmong New Year, it is thin, tattered and faded. This is the jacket my mother wore as a girl, growing up in the mountains of Laos. It is what she wore the night her family fled their village in fear of retribution from the Communists following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
Underneath this jacket is another one, also old and ragged. It belonged to my mother's youngest sister. Like many others, my aunt and mother were forced to separate that fateful night. In the final seconds of good-bye, my aunt pulled off her jacket and handed it to my mother to keep in case they never met again. Eventually, they found each other in a refugee camp in Thailand,...
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 15:53
Comments
SOURCE: openDemocracy (2-17-11)
[Heather McRobie is studying human rights in South East Europe at the University of Sarajevo, and previously worked at the Amman Center for Human Rights Studies in Jordan.
Anes Makul is a Bosnian journalist and researcher working on nationalism. He has worked for over two years as a journalist on Bosnian daily newspapers, recently spending a year researching Bosnia's economic crisis.]
Earlier this month, the Slovenian Parliament adopted a Declaration on Yugoslav communities, a document which presents a general attitude of Slovenia's legislative body towards ethnic groups from the former Yugoslavia who live in Slovenia. This marks a step forward in respecting international human rights standards, as since 1991 thousands of so called “erased” people living in Slovenia who had their origins in the former Yugoslav republics remained unrecognized in Slovenian citizenship laws. In the language of the post-Yugoslav, ethnically-based rubrics of the region, the “erased” are...
Anes Makul is a Bosnian journalist and researcher working on nationalism. He has worked for over two years as a journalist on Bosnian daily newspapers, recently spending a year researching Bosnia's economic crisis.]
Earlier this month, the Slovenian Parliament adopted a Declaration on Yugoslav communities, a document which presents a general attitude of Slovenia's legislative body towards ethnic groups from the former Yugoslavia who live in Slovenia. This marks a step forward in respecting international human rights standards, as since 1991 thousands of so called “erased” people living in Slovenia who had their origins in the former Yugoslav republics remained unrecognized in Slovenian citizenship laws. In the language of the post-Yugoslav, ethnically-based rubrics of the region, the “erased” are...
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 14:46
SOURCE: American Spectator (2-16-11)
[Lisa Fabrizio is a columnist who hails from Connecticut (mailbox@lisafab.com).]
I have a sister who's around a decade younger than me. One day, a few years ago, we were discussing the presidency of Ronald Reagan when she made a most interesting comment. "When Reagan was president," she said, "I always felt safe." While I didn't think much of it at the time, I did so later on and most recently with the commemoration of Reagan's 100th birthday last week.
The Reagan memorials brought inevitable comparisons with other presidents; none more so than the current occupant of the Oval Office. And most of them are almost hysterically funny when you think about it. For example, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for...well I don't really know why, while Reagan, who, with a little help from his friends, actually won the Cold War, bringing an end to decades of abject fear, was always depicted as a war monger...
I have a sister who's around a decade younger than me. One day, a few years ago, we were discussing the presidency of Ronald Reagan when she made a most interesting comment. "When Reagan was president," she said, "I always felt safe." While I didn't think much of it at the time, I did so later on and most recently with the commemoration of Reagan's 100th birthday last week.
The Reagan memorials brought inevitable comparisons with other presidents; none more so than the current occupant of the Oval Office. And most of them are almost hysterically funny when you think about it. For example, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for...well I don't really know why, while Reagan, who, with a little help from his friends, actually won the Cold War, bringing an end to decades of abject fear, was always depicted as a war monger...
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 14:42
SOURCE: American Spectator (2-16-11)
[Mr. Hannaford is a former member of the Mount Vernon Advisory Committee.]
Next Monday, February 21, will be the Washington's Birthday Holiday. That is what it's been ever since an Act of Congress created it in 1880 to honor the nation's first president. Forty years ago, however, it metamorphosed into "Presidents' Day." How did this happen?
Beginning in 1951 a fellow named Harold Stonebridge Fischer created the Presidents' Day National Committee. He became its executive director. Over the next two decades he lobbied tirelessly to have such a day become law. He favored March 4, the original presidential inauguration day, as the date for his creation. Alas for Harold, it never happened, although it gave him twenty years of steady employment.
The bill stalled in the Senate Judiciary committee because its members were worried that a new holiday squeezed in on the heels of Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays would be too costly to the...
Next Monday, February 21, will be the Washington's Birthday Holiday. That is what it's been ever since an Act of Congress created it in 1880 to honor the nation's first president. Forty years ago, however, it metamorphosed into "Presidents' Day." How did this happen?
Beginning in 1951 a fellow named Harold Stonebridge Fischer created the Presidents' Day National Committee. He became its executive director. Over the next two decades he lobbied tirelessly to have such a day become law. He favored March 4, the original presidential inauguration day, as the date for his creation. Alas for Harold, it never happened, although it gave him twenty years of steady employment.
The bill stalled in the Senate Judiciary committee because its members were worried that a new holiday squeezed in on the heels of Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays would be too costly to the...
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 14:40
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (2-14-11)
[Sophia Deboick is a historian and writer on popular culture.]
The development of Valentine's Day into the orgy of commercialised sentimentality we know today has been a long process, with Roman paganism and the poets of the middle ages both making a contribution to the day's current associations with romance, love and sex. But the reclaiming of the day by fundamentalist Christians to further the agenda of the religious right has added a new chapter to this long history.
The Romans were more responsible for the association of 14 February with sexual love than the Christian saint (or saints) who gave the day its name. On 14 February Juno Fructifier, queen of the Roman gods and goddess of women and marriage, was celebrated. The following day was the Feast of Lupercalia, a festival even more overtly associated with fertility and sexual rambunctiousness. The focus of the festival in Rome itself was the grotto at the foot of the Palatine Hill where Romulus and Remus...
The development of Valentine's Day into the orgy of commercialised sentimentality we know today has been a long process, with Roman paganism and the poets of the middle ages both making a contribution to the day's current associations with romance, love and sex. But the reclaiming of the day by fundamentalist Christians to further the agenda of the religious right has added a new chapter to this long history.
The Romans were more responsible for the association of 14 February with sexual love than the Christian saint (or saints) who gave the day its name. On 14 February Juno Fructifier, queen of the Roman gods and goddess of women and marriage, was celebrated. The following day was the Feast of Lupercalia, a festival even more overtly associated with fertility and sexual rambunctiousness. The focus of the festival in Rome itself was the grotto at the foot of the Palatine Hill where Romulus and Remus...
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - 19:05
SOURCE: WaPo (2-15-11)
[The writers were based in Baghdad in 2003-04 as officials of the Defense Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority.]
What went wrong in Iraq? According to Donald Rumsfeld's memoir, U.S. difficulties stemmed not from the Pentagon's failure to plan for the war's aftermath - or Rumsfeld's unwillingness as defense secretary to provide enough troops to secure Iraqis after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Rumsfeld pins most of the blame on the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) for its alleged mishandling of Iraq's political transition in 2003-04, which "stoked nationalist resentments" and "fanned the embers of what would become the Iraqi insurgency."
We were Defense Department officials through the early phases of the war and worked for the CPA in Baghdad. We have defended many of the difficult decisions Rumsfeld made and respect his service to our country. But his book paints an inaccurate and unfair history of U...
What went wrong in Iraq? According to Donald Rumsfeld's memoir, U.S. difficulties stemmed not from the Pentagon's failure to plan for the war's aftermath - or Rumsfeld's unwillingness as defense secretary to provide enough troops to secure Iraqis after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Rumsfeld pins most of the blame on the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) for its alleged mishandling of Iraq's political transition in 2003-04, which "stoked nationalist resentments" and "fanned the embers of what would become the Iraqi insurgency."
We were Defense Department officials through the early phases of the war and worked for the CPA in Baghdad. We have defended many of the difficult decisions Rumsfeld made and respect his service to our country. But his book paints an inaccurate and unfair history of U...
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - 10:08
SOURCE: Moscow Times (2-11-11)
[Gennady Burbulis was secretary of state under Boris Yeltsin from 1991-92.]
Feb. 1 marked what would have been the 80th birthday of Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation and the first popularly elected leader in the country's long history. In Yekaterinburg, President Dmitry Medvedev laid a wreath at a new monument dedicated to Yeltsin and called on the nation to be grateful for his service to his country. In Moscow at a concert to honor Yeltsin, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cited Yeltsin's enormous role in giving the country a "second birth." For several days, Russia's mass media was filled with reports, discussions and programs dedicated to Yeltsin and his presidency.
This did not, however, signal a substantive re-evaluation of Yeltsin, his presidency and the early period of Russia's statehood. Yeltsin remains a misunderstood and maligned figure in the country. More often than not, he is portrayed as a cartoon figure, and his...
Feb. 1 marked what would have been the 80th birthday of Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation and the first popularly elected leader in the country's long history. In Yekaterinburg, President Dmitry Medvedev laid a wreath at a new monument dedicated to Yeltsin and called on the nation to be grateful for his service to his country. In Moscow at a concert to honor Yeltsin, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cited Yeltsin's enormous role in giving the country a "second birth." For several days, Russia's mass media was filled with reports, discussions and programs dedicated to Yeltsin and his presidency.
This did not, however, signal a substantive re-evaluation of Yeltsin, his presidency and the early period of Russia's statehood. Yeltsin remains a misunderstood and maligned figure in the country. More often than not, he is portrayed as a cartoon figure, and his...
Monday, February 14, 2011 - 13:27
SOURCE: American Spectator (12-31-69)
[Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.]
Often, America's religious life in the 1950s is dismissed as sterile and conventional. Supposedly President Dwight Eisenhower typified generic, superficial religion with his oft quoted quip: "Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."
The quote actually came from Eisenhower in 1952 after meeting his WWII fellow commander, Soviet Marshal Grigori Zhukov. Ike was explaining to reporters how America's creed of equality was based on the "Judeo-Christian concept," contrasting with the Soviet understanding of religion as the "opiate of the people." Eisenhower was not describing his own personal theology.
Grandson David Eisenhower's Going Home to Glory, a new memoir of his grandfather's retirement years, helps to...
Often, America's religious life in the 1950s is dismissed as sterile and conventional. Supposedly President Dwight Eisenhower typified generic, superficial religion with his oft quoted quip: "Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."
The quote actually came from Eisenhower in 1952 after meeting his WWII fellow commander, Soviet Marshal Grigori Zhukov. Ike was explaining to reporters how America's creed of equality was based on the "Judeo-Christian concept," contrasting with the Soviet understanding of religion as the "opiate of the people." Eisenhower was not describing his own personal theology.
Grandson David Eisenhower's Going Home to Glory, a new memoir of his grandfather's retirement years, helps to...
Monday, February 14, 2011 - 13:22
SOURCE: The Nation (2-11-11)
[Pedro Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University. Robert Cohen is a professor of history and social studies in NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.]
Sentimental 100th birthday tributes to Ronald Reagan rolling out this month would have us believe that the “Great Communicator” led America into a bright conservative era of prosperity, ended the cold war by getting tough with the Soviets and restored America’s confidence by flexing its military muscles abroad and reining in the welfare state at home.
But in addition to overlooking the dramatic increase in homelessness that occurred on Reagan’s watch, never mind the covert counter-revolutionary operations in Central America, promoters of Reagan nostalgia consistently ignore his record on race, civil rights, and South Africa. There, Reagan’s legacy is abysmal.
Early in his political career Reagan opposed every major piece of civil rights...
Sentimental 100th birthday tributes to Ronald Reagan rolling out this month would have us believe that the “Great Communicator” led America into a bright conservative era of prosperity, ended the cold war by getting tough with the Soviets and restored America’s confidence by flexing its military muscles abroad and reining in the welfare state at home.
But in addition to overlooking the dramatic increase in homelessness that occurred on Reagan’s watch, never mind the covert counter-revolutionary operations in Central America, promoters of Reagan nostalgia consistently ignore his record on race, civil rights, and South Africa. There, Reagan’s legacy is abysmal.
Early in his political career Reagan opposed every major piece of civil rights...
Monday, February 14, 2011 - 12:30
SOURCE: NYT (2-12-11)
[Lawrence D. Hogan is a senior professor of history at Union County College in Cranford, N.J.]
On July 5, 1930, about 20,000 fans filed into seven-year-old Yankee Stadium for a baseball doubleheader. What made this day special was that the teams, the New York Lincoln Giants and the Baltimore Black Sox, were the first Negro leagues clubs to play at the Stadium, which was essentially for whites only, like so many other public places in the United States at the time.
Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees, had donated the use of the Stadium for the games to benefit of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation’s first successful black union. Between games, the tap dancer Bill Robinson, known as Bojangles, ran backward, outracing several Y.M.C.A. track stars. The band from the 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the Harlem Hell Fighters, entertained the crowd. And when the day’s receipts were tallied, $3,500 was donated to the Brotherhood’s treasury....
On July 5, 1930, about 20,000 fans filed into seven-year-old Yankee Stadium for a baseball doubleheader. What made this day special was that the teams, the New York Lincoln Giants and the Baltimore Black Sox, were the first Negro leagues clubs to play at the Stadium, which was essentially for whites only, like so many other public places in the United States at the time.
Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees, had donated the use of the Stadium for the games to benefit of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation’s first successful black union. Between games, the tap dancer Bill Robinson, known as Bojangles, ran backward, outracing several Y.M.C.A. track stars. The band from the 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the Harlem Hell Fighters, entertained the crowd. And when the day’s receipts were tallied, $3,500 was donated to the Brotherhood’s treasury....
Sunday, February 13, 2011 - 14:43
SOURCE: WaPo (2-11-11)
[Robert J. Samuelson is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on political, economic and social issues.]
We are deluged with Ronald Reagan celebrations and retrospectives, but most are misleading. They omit Reagan's singular domestic achievement and the wellspring of his popularity: the defeat of double-digit inflation. In 1979 and 1980, inflation averaged 13 percent; by 1984, it was 4 percent - and falling. Without subdued inflation, the economy would have remained a mess and Reagan might have lost his 1984 reelection bid. He certainly wouldn't have won his 58.5 percent to 40.4 percent landslide.
You will not find this in most of today's Reagan appraisals, which tell us more about the appraisers than about Reagan. In an 11-page cover package, Time magazine doesn't mention inflation but pronounces Reagan a "transformational" leader whose political style - not his policies - should be emulated by Barack Obama. In its 11 pages on Reagan, the...
We are deluged with Ronald Reagan celebrations and retrospectives, but most are misleading. They omit Reagan's singular domestic achievement and the wellspring of his popularity: the defeat of double-digit inflation. In 1979 and 1980, inflation averaged 13 percent; by 1984, it was 4 percent - and falling. Without subdued inflation, the economy would have remained a mess and Reagan might have lost his 1984 reelection bid. He certainly wouldn't have won his 58.5 percent to 40.4 percent landslide.
You will not find this in most of today's Reagan appraisals, which tell us more about the appraisers than about Reagan. In an 11-page cover package, Time magazine doesn't mention inflation but pronounces Reagan a "transformational" leader whose political style - not his policies - should be emulated by Barack Obama. In its 11 pages on Reagan, the...
Friday, February 11, 2011 - 09:56
SOURCE: Huffington Post (2-10-11)
Media commentators remain divided about the hope for a democratic Egypt in light of the protests that have rocked the country. Some fear an Iran-like Muslim theocracy, while others have been cautiously optimistic that a secular order can take hold. Those who predict a positive outcome argue that Egyptians (and the broader Arab world) have internalized liberal-Western norms, which can provide a foundation for sweeping reform.
While it is too early to predict the results of these events, there is one positive sign emerging from Cairo: the V-for-Victory (known to some as the peace sign) has taken hold. This timeless two-fingered gesture, popularized by Winston Churchill in World War II, has appeared at every major global political hotspot in the past half-century. When they use it, the Egyptian protestors signal the extent to which Western thought has permeated their world.
In the dark days of 1941, the Nazis occupied continental Europe, and the situation looked...
While it is too early to predict the results of these events, there is one positive sign emerging from Cairo: the V-for-Victory (known to some as the peace sign) has taken hold. This timeless two-fingered gesture, popularized by Winston Churchill in World War II, has appeared at every major global political hotspot in the past half-century. When they use it, the Egyptian protestors signal the extent to which Western thought has permeated their world.
In the dark days of 1941, the Nazis occupied continental Europe, and the situation looked...
Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 15:05
SOURCE: City Journal (2-1-11)
[Myron Magnet is City Journal’s editor-at-large and was its editor from 1994 through 2006. He is the author of The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.]
In the roster of famous last words—from Goethe’s “More light!” to Nathan Hale’s “I regret I have but one life to give for my country” to John Maynard Keynes’s debonair “I should have drunk more champagne”—surely the final utterance of James Madison deserves an honored place. Bedridden with rheumatism at 85, the fourth president had spent 19 years in retirement at Montpelier, the columned brick Virginia plantation house where he had grown up since age nine or ten; where, as a young legislator, he had pored over history and political philosophy to help frame his plan for the United States Constitution; and where, as a 46-year-old ex-congressman, he had brought his wife of three years to live with his parents on their 5,000 rich Piedmont acres. That...
In the roster of famous last words—from Goethe’s “More light!” to Nathan Hale’s “I regret I have but one life to give for my country” to John Maynard Keynes’s debonair “I should have drunk more champagne”—surely the final utterance of James Madison deserves an honored place. Bedridden with rheumatism at 85, the fourth president had spent 19 years in retirement at Montpelier, the columned brick Virginia plantation house where he had grown up since age nine or ten; where, as a young legislator, he had pored over history and political philosophy to help frame his plan for the United States Constitution; and where, as a 46-year-old ex-congressman, he had brought his wife of three years to live with his parents on their 5,000 rich Piedmont acres. That...
Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 13:00
SOURCE: Atlantic (1-24-11)
[John Tierney is former Professor of Political Science at Boston College
.]
In yesterday's Boston Sunday Globe, Bryan Bender reported on the Kennedy family's tight-fisted and iron-willed efforts to keep the official papers of Robert F. Kennedy secret. Those papers, spanning Kennedy's public career, are housed under close guard at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. The papers of greatest interest to historians and researchers are those from Kennedy's years of service as Attorney General in the Administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy. In particular, historians say the records presumably contain valuable archival resources -- perhaps diaries, notes, messages and memos, phone logs and recordings, and other documents -- that would reveal details, and answer questions, about Robert Kennedy's role in the early 1960s as the coordinator of Operation Mongoose, a covert effort to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro or to destabilize his regime....
In yesterday's Boston Sunday Globe, Bryan Bender reported on the Kennedy family's tight-fisted and iron-willed efforts to keep the official papers of Robert F. Kennedy secret. Those papers, spanning Kennedy's public career, are housed under close guard at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. The papers of greatest interest to historians and researchers are those from Kennedy's years of service as Attorney General in the Administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy. In particular, historians say the records presumably contain valuable archival resources -- perhaps diaries, notes, messages and memos, phone logs and recordings, and other documents -- that would reveal details, and answer questions, about Robert Kennedy's role in the early 1960s as the coordinator of Operation Mongoose, a covert effort to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro or to destabilize his regime....
Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 12:04
SOURCE: WSJ (2-9-11)
[Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of "Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010).]
For 16 years prior to Ronald Reagan's presidency, the U.S. economy was in a tailspin—a result of bipartisan ignorance that resulted in tax increases, dollar devaluations, wage and price controls, minimum-wage hikes, misguided spending, pandering to unions, protectionist measures and other policy mistakes.
In the late 1970s and early '80s, 10-year bond yields and inflation both were in the low double digits. The "misery index"—the sum of consumer price inflation plus the unemployment rate—peaked at well over 20%. The real value of the S&P 500 stock price index had declined at an average annual rate of 6% from early 1966 to August 1982.
For anyone old enough today, memories of the Arab oil embargo and price shocks—followed by price controls and rationing and long...
For 16 years prior to Ronald Reagan's presidency, the U.S. economy was in a tailspin—a result of bipartisan ignorance that resulted in tax increases, dollar devaluations, wage and price controls, minimum-wage hikes, misguided spending, pandering to unions, protectionist measures and other policy mistakes.
In the late 1970s and early '80s, 10-year bond yields and inflation both were in the low double digits. The "misery index"—the sum of consumer price inflation plus the unemployment rate—peaked at well over 20%. The real value of the S&P 500 stock price index had declined at an average annual rate of 6% from early 1966 to August 1982.
For anyone old enough today, memories of the Arab oil embargo and price shocks—followed by price controls and rationing and long...
Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 08:47
SOURCE: Jewish Daily Forward (2-2-11)
[Jane Eisner is editor of the Jewish Daily Forward.]
It was 25 years ago, and I still remember the deep, sharp cold as we stood on the Glienicke Bridge that winter morning. The day before, journalists from around Europe were brought to the bridge that separated the outskirts of West Berlin from the East German town of Potsdam. Something important was to happen the next day, we were told. I quickly realized that the footwear I brought from London, where I was based as a correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, was inadequate and after the press briefing ended, I bought a pair of warm, gray boots in Berlin.
My Shcharansky boots, I named them, and wore them with affection for years.
To a young reporter who had written about Jewish refuseniks and their struggle to leave the Soviet Union, this story bore the weight of history. On February 11, 1986, I stood on the bridge and did my job, chronicling the release of Anatoly Shcharansky as he strode from...
It was 25 years ago, and I still remember the deep, sharp cold as we stood on the Glienicke Bridge that winter morning. The day before, journalists from around Europe were brought to the bridge that separated the outskirts of West Berlin from the East German town of Potsdam. Something important was to happen the next day, we were told. I quickly realized that the footwear I brought from London, where I was based as a correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, was inadequate and after the press briefing ended, I bought a pair of warm, gray boots in Berlin.
My Shcharansky boots, I named them, and wore them with affection for years.
To a young reporter who had written about Jewish refuseniks and their struggle to leave the Soviet Union, this story bore the weight of history. On February 11, 1986, I stood on the bridge and did my job, chronicling the release of Anatoly Shcharansky as he strode from...
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - 22:45
SOURCE: Huffington Post (2-8-11)
[Lincoln Mitchell is an Associate at Columbia University's Harriman Institute. From 2006-2009, he was the Arnold A. Saltzman Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics at Columbia University.]
A few days before the 1988 election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, I attended a rally on the University of California campus where I was enrolled in my last year of college. Although it was reasonably clear by then that Bush was going to win the election, we still held out hope that Dukakis could somehow make a surprise comeback and bring about the end of the Reagan era. One of the speakers at that rally was the mayor of Santa Cruz, the town where the university was located. The mayor, who was probably about 15-20 years older than most of the students in the room, began his comments by saying, "You think you're tired of Ronald Reagan?" After pausing for dramatic effect, he continued, "Well, Ronald Reagan signed my diploma from UC Santa...
A few days before the 1988 election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, I attended a rally on the University of California campus where I was enrolled in my last year of college. Although it was reasonably clear by then that Bush was going to win the election, we still held out hope that Dukakis could somehow make a surprise comeback and bring about the end of the Reagan era. One of the speakers at that rally was the mayor of Santa Cruz, the town where the university was located. The mayor, who was probably about 15-20 years older than most of the students in the room, began his comments by saying, "You think you're tired of Ronald Reagan?" After pausing for dramatic effect, he continued, "Well, Ronald Reagan signed my diploma from UC Santa...
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - 12:06
SOURCE: NYT Book Review (2-13-11)
[Sam Tanenhaus is the editor of the Book Review.]
With the death last month of Daniel Bell, America lost its last great 20th-century big thinker, though this is not necessarily the impression many now have of him. One reason is that Bell was most prolific during a period, 1950-80, bounded by the cold war, that has receded into the half-forgotten past. Another is that for most of his career, Bell was seen less as a singular figure than as one of a club of intellectuals whose pedigrees were so similar they seemed interchangeable — New York City-reared Jews trained in factional combat at City College and groomed as journalists in the pages of small-circulation magazines (The New Leader, Commentary, Partisan Review, Encounter, The Public Interest), with detours into the Luce empire (Bell was for a time the labor editor of Fortune) and university perches (in Bell’s case Columbia and Harvard).
The aura of collective identity gains credence from Peter Steinfels’s book...
With the death last month of Daniel Bell, America lost its last great 20th-century big thinker, though this is not necessarily the impression many now have of him. One reason is that Bell was most prolific during a period, 1950-80, bounded by the cold war, that has receded into the half-forgotten past. Another is that for most of his career, Bell was seen less as a singular figure than as one of a club of intellectuals whose pedigrees were so similar they seemed interchangeable — New York City-reared Jews trained in factional combat at City College and groomed as journalists in the pages of small-circulation magazines (The New Leader, Commentary, Partisan Review, Encounter, The Public Interest), with detours into the Luce empire (Bell was for a time the labor editor of Fortune) and university perches (in Bell’s case Columbia and Harvard).
The aura of collective identity gains credence from Peter Steinfels’s book...
Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - 12:27
SOURCE: The New Republic (2-7-11)
[Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.]
Politico has an interesting feature about the fear among conservatives that their campaign to canonize Ronald Reagan has turned their hero into a post-ideological hero, rather than an embodiment of conservative values. A specimen of this fear is Steven Hayward's National Review essay, Reagan Reclaimed," castigating liberals for an ideological kidnapping of Ronaldus Magnus.
Before I wade into this, I should summarize my view of Reagan. I don't think he was a great president. The main accomplishment which he's credited, winning the Cold War, is one in which his policies contributed a very small amount. The most important cause of the fall of the Soviet Union by far was its failed, unsustainable political and economic system, which would have eventually collapsed regardless of American policy. (It's interesting that conservatives' mania for crediting Reagan with the fall of the USSR has required them to...
Politico has an interesting feature about the fear among conservatives that their campaign to canonize Ronald Reagan has turned their hero into a post-ideological hero, rather than an embodiment of conservative values. A specimen of this fear is Steven Hayward's National Review essay, Reagan Reclaimed," castigating liberals for an ideological kidnapping of Ronaldus Magnus.
Before I wade into this, I should summarize my view of Reagan. I don't think he was a great president. The main accomplishment which he's credited, winning the Cold War, is one in which his policies contributed a very small amount. The most important cause of the fall of the Soviet Union by far was its failed, unsustainable political and economic system, which would have eventually collapsed regardless of American policy. (It's interesting that conservatives' mania for crediting Reagan with the fall of the USSR has required them to...
Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - 12:00
SOURCE: WSJ (2-8-11)
[Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.]
Ronald Reagan's status as a mythic figure was demonstrated on Sunday as 1,500 guests gathered at the Reagan Presidential Library to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday. Liberals have come to accept his strengths and even acknowledge some of his accomplishments, while conservatives have raised even higher his pedestal. Yet unanswered questions about the Gipper linger.
His son, Ron Reagan, notes that even though his father was on public display his entire adult life, for "even those of us who were closest to him, [there was a] hidden 10% that remains a considerable mystery." One mystery: How could a boy who spent much of his youth alone, was picked on by bullies, and was so nearsighted that he was chosen last for playground games, acquire the ambition to run for president four times?...
When Reagan was 11, his mother gave him an inspirational novel called "That Printer of Udell's,...
Ronald Reagan's status as a mythic figure was demonstrated on Sunday as 1,500 guests gathered at the Reagan Presidential Library to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday. Liberals have come to accept his strengths and even acknowledge some of his accomplishments, while conservatives have raised even higher his pedestal. Yet unanswered questions about the Gipper linger.
His son, Ron Reagan, notes that even though his father was on public display his entire adult life, for "even those of us who were closest to him, [there was a] hidden 10% that remains a considerable mystery." One mystery: How could a boy who spent much of his youth alone, was picked on by bullies, and was so nearsighted that he was chosen last for playground games, acquire the ambition to run for president four times?...
When Reagan was 11, his mother gave him an inspirational novel called "That Printer of Udell's,...
Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - 10:58
