A startling fact just emerged in the course of some routine maintenance work on the mailing lists for www.DanielPipes.org: One "Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan" has been subscribed as nidalhasan@aol.com since March 2009 to all the Middle East Forum mailing lists, including my own. He opened some but not many of the mailings.

In addition to the name, there are several reasons to think this is the butcher of Ft. Hood: He received the mailings for over half a year before his identity became notorious; he has not opened any e-mails in a while, presumably since he has been jailed; and a search for nidalhasan@aol.com on the internet finds this address associated with the Texas jihadi (for example, by the Northeast Intelligence Network)..

Comments: (1) I have never assumed that all the Middle East Forum's or my readers share our outlook. To the contrary, the lively debates carried on in the more than 100,000 published reader comments show that readers have all outlooks. Still, I never imagined that a future terrorist would subscribe himself to our writings.

(2) Why, I can't help but wonder, would Hasan have wanted to see the Middle East Forum's work? Opposition research? Or might he have been stalking us?

(3) This subscription gives new urgency to the concerns I addressed at "Am I Helping the Terrorist Enemy?" and I hereby rededicate myself to assuring that the Middle East Forum does not inadvertently provide guidance to the country's foes.

(4) On a sad note, this news brings to the mind that I learned just two months earlier, again while doing routine chores, that my articles were still being sent to the late Daniel Pearl's Wall Street Journal e-mail address, which had been initially subscribed before his murder nearly eight years ago.

I suffer from a motor neuron disorder, in my case a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): Lou Gehrig's disease. Motor neuron disorders are far from rare: Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and a variety of lesser diseases all come under that heading. What is distinctive about ALS—the least common of this family of neuro-muscular illnesses—is firstly that there is no loss of sensation (a mixed blessing) and secondly that there is no pain. In contrast to almost every other serious or deadly disease, one is thus left free to contemplate at leisure and in minimal discomfort the catastrophic progress of one's own deterioration.

In effect, ALS constitutes progressive imprisonment without parole. First you lose the use of a digit or two; then a limb; then and almost inevitably, all four. The muscles of the torso decline into near torpor, a practical problem from the digestive point of view but also life-threatening, in that breathing becomes at first difficult and eventually impossible without external assistance in the form of a tube-and-pump apparatus. In the more extreme variants of the disease, associated with dysfunction of the upper motor neurons (the rest of the body is driven by the so-called lower motor neurons), swallowing, speaking, and even controlling the jaw and head become impossible. I do not (yet) suffer from this aspect of the disease, or else I could not dictate this text.

By my present stage of decline, I am thus effectively quadriplegic. With extraordinary effort I can move my right hand a little and can adduct my left arm some six inches across my chest. My legs, although they will lock when upright long enough to allow a nurse to transfer me from one chair to another, cannot bear my weight and only one of them has any autonomous movement left in it. Thus when legs or arms are set in a given position, there they remain until someone moves them for me. The same is true of my torso, with the result that backache from inertia and pressure is a chronic irritation. Having no use of my arms, I cannot scratch an itch, adjust my spectacles, remove food particles from my teeth, or anything else that—as a moment's reflection will confirm—we all do dozens of times a day. To say the least, I am utterly and completely dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and anyone else)....

Thomas Babington Macaulay was a 19th-century British historian, essayist, and politician best remembered for his multi-volume History of England and implementation of a penal code that remains the law in India and South Asia today. But as Robert E. Sullivan (Univ. of Notre Dame) shows, there was much more to the man whose thoughts on race, subjugation, civilizing, and imperial slaughter have eluded past biographers. Through examination of Macaulay’s private letters and diaries, Sullivan has unearthed a sinister vision of a power-hungry man emotionally crippled by his father, in love with his two youngest sisters, and a proponent of “genocide.” Macaulay is an important revisionist biography that sets out to rectify the view of this man as grand and a hero. Devoting his great talents to gaining power—above all for England and its empire—made Macaulay’s life a tragedy. Sullivan offers a study of an afflicted genius and a thoughtful meditation on the modern ethics of power.

Right now, America is experiencing a combination of economic conditions it has never seen before, and quite frankly, no one really knows exactly how this story is going to end.

While there are some who are oblivious to the new economy around them, those more directly effected believe that this is no ordinary recession. In some areas of the country, record unemployment has brought entire communities to their knees with images that make the Great Depression look like a picnic. Some estimates of the true unemployment rate for areas like Detroit is 50%. At the height of the Great Depression, it was only 23%.

Economist David Levy has created a name for the anomaly we are living in. He calls it the “New Abnormal.” At the heart of his theory is an America that will spend the next 10 years living in an era of chronically high unemployment and shrinking income.

Economic historian John Steel Gordon concurs with Levy’s prediction, "It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries."

And University of Texas historian, H.W. Brands believes, "There will be a continued hollowing-out of the middle class."

What does all of this mean?

It means that when we emerge from the deepest, most enduring recession we have seen since the 1930s, America will be a different place....

15-Session Miniconference,
"Historical Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage,"
Will be Highlight of American Historical Association Annual Meeting in San Diego January 7-10, 2010

"Marriage is so far from having been an institution, fixed by permanent and unalterable laws, that it has been continually varying in every period, and in every country."

- 18th Century author William Alexander

(Washington, DC – December 28, 2010) A unique 15-session miniconference addressing "Historical Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage" will be a highlight of this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) in San Diego, CA January 7-10. The miniconference sessions will involve some of the leading figures in historical research, such as Blanche Wiesen Cooke, John D’Emilio, Michael Grossberg, Ramón Gutiérrez, Alice Kessler Harris, Linda Kerber and many others, and will address a diverse range of topics related to the changing definition of marriage, domestic unions and family throughout history. The sessions are open to the public, and the AHA will publish their findings in 2010.

"One theme that emerges across this diverse range of miniconference panels is that marriage is not a static institution," said AHA President and Harvard University Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. "The Puritans were actually marriage innovators, introducing marriage as a civil contract rather than a sacrament in the 17th Century, and permitting divorce. In this century, it was not until 1949 that the California State Supreme Court struck down racial restrictions on marriage in the state, and not until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated those restrictions for the country as a whole. We can argue about what marriage should be today…but we cannot argue that marriage has always been the same."

For more than a decade the issue of marriage equality and partnership recognition has been the subject of ongoing social and political debate both in the United States and overseas, with various courts, legislatures and ballot referenda taking different approaches and developing different responses to the question of what constitutes a "marriage." Differing civil and religious views of marriage and family will be addressed by leading scholars in this series of panels intended to bring historical perspectives to the discussion of marriage equality.

The miniconference was developed by the AHA Working Group for Historical Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage. Among the issues to be addressed in the 15-session miniconference are:

Marriage politics in the 21st Century United States (Session 71, "Gay Marriage and Proposition 8: Reflections," Friday, January 8: 2:30-4:30 PM)

Perspectives of different groups who have been denied access to marriage, including gay and lesbian people, the disabled, racial groups and the poor (Session 106, "Access Denied: Comparative Biopolitical Perspectives on Marriage Restriction," Saturday, January 9: 9:00-11:00 AM)

How the issues of gay marriage and gays in the military have intertwined (Session 138, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Marry," Saturday, January 9: 11:30 AM-1:30 PM)

How social institutions, including governments, communities and churches have sought to influence, define and regulate inter-ethnic marriages (Session 174, "Inter-Ethnic Marriage in American Comparative Perspective," Saturday, January 9: 2:30 -4:30 PM)

Relationships between historical and legal arguments in legal cases addressing same-sex marriage. (Plenary Session, "Marriage on Trial: Historians and Lawyers in Same-Sex Marriage Cases," Saturday, January 9: 8:00-10:00 PM)

"Californians have been involved in an ongoing debate about marriage equality since the State Supreme Court granted, and Proposition 8 rescinded, the right to same-sex marriage," noted AHA Executive Director Arnita Jones. "AHA members wanted to contribute to this conversation by doing what historians do best—sharing research and perspectives on how these issues have evolved throughout history. With this year’s special miniconference, we hope to add the power of historical perspective to the global conversation on marriage equality."

"The Working Group for Historical Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage seeks to set the issue in broad historical perspective: chronologically, geographically, and thematically," noted Working Group Chair and University of Southern California Professor of History and American Studies and Ethnicity Karen Halttunen. "Supporters of Proposition 8 argue that the initiative restored the historically consistent definition of marriage. This miniconference challenges this ill-informed idea by presenting a history that does justice to the complexity of human experience over time."

About the American Historical Association

The American Historical Association and its 14,000 members are dedicated to strengthening the practice and teaching of history by promoting historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical objects and the dissemination of historical research. This125-year-old nonprofit membership organization is the oldest and largest association for professional historians in the United States. AHA members include primary school teachers, academics at colleges and universities, graduate students, and historians in museums, libraries and archives. The AHA advocates for historians, fights to ensure academic freedom, monitors professional standards and spearheads essential research in the field.

The program of the 124th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association is available at http://aha.confex.com/aha/2010/webprogram/start.html

For more information, please contact Mark Aurigemma at 212-600-1960 or mark@aucomm.net or Roberta Sklar at (917) 704-6358 or robertasklar@yahoo.com.

January is almost upon us, and it is time again for the American Historical Association’s annual meeting. The 2010 convention, themed “Oceans, Islands, Continents,” will take place in San Diego from January 7-10.

Protests by numerous history departments over the prominent support given to California’s Proposition 8 by the owner of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, one of the hotels where the meeting is to be headquartered, have prompted the AHA to sponsor a working group for “Historical Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage.” This working group will explore recent scholarship on sexuality and marriage and will be running a series of threaded sessions throughout the convention. In keeping with the theme of “Oceans, Islands, Continents,” the working group is co-sponsored, along with the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, the 2008 documentary An Island Calling, an exploration of the deeper issues surrounding the 2001 slaying of a prominent gay couple in Suva, Fiji.

As always, the AHA will be hosting a number of different sessions that place current events in an historical context. The inauguration of America’s first black president, coupled with the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, has spurred the formation of a panel chaired by UC-Berkeley’s David Hollinger to examine Barack Obama and the influence of various modes of twentieth century American history on his presidency and political thought. A roundtable discussion chaired by Michael A. Bernstein of Tulane University will also examine the legacy of the New Deal and its effect on Obama’s economic policies, the history of social legislation in America, and the Democratic Party’s complex relationship with foreign relations and national security.

The proliferation of new technologies has revolutionized both historical research and the teaching of history, and the AHA has formed several panels to address the ever-increasing digitization of the historical profession. Google’s controversial Google Books program will be the focus of the provocatively titled panel “Is Google Good for History?”

The AHA is not just the domain of academic historians, and there will be several panels at this year’s convention on history teaching in our nation’s high schools, and the relationship between academics and primary and secondary school teachers. The panel “Working Together: A Century of Collaboration between Classroom Teachers and University Professors to Improve History Teaching,” chaired by a high school teacher, will trace the origins of the separation between the university and the high school, and the developments within the past twenty-odd years to raise historical education standards in the United States.

HNN will have comprehensive coverage of these panels and many others, and will, of course, bring you the details of the AHA’s business and procedural meetings. Look for conference updates starting January 7.

As far as job titles go, ‘Historian of the Future’ is an absolutely doozy. However, as one of the leading practitioners of this fascinating trade, Dr James Bellini, can testify, the description can lead to a few misunderstandings: he is most definitely not, for instance, a magician.

“Let me be clear: I don’t have a cloak, a pointy hat and a magic wand,” Bellini jokes – and he absolutely can’t tell you who’s going to win the 3.30 at Ascot. What he can do, however, is draw upon a career spanning decades of research and analysis, networking and award-winning creative endeavours to produce assessments of the likely state of the future which are as informed, and as entertaining, as any you’ll encounter.

When SSON meets Bellini, the good doctor – whose PhD “in military stuff” came from the London School of Economics – has just finished presenting to the 8th Annual Shared Services Week in Sitges, near Barcelona. His talk – the first plenary of the event – has ranged from early corporate history, via demographic change in modern Europe, through ‘Gutenberg 2.0’, to the rise of a new wave of consumers and the hiring challenges posed by the emergence of ‘Generation C’– and he’s scattered some pretty brain-bending statistics along the way.

For example, those of us in the audience now know that by 2040, if current trends are maintained, Italy will have 20 million fewer inhabitants; that “in 1965 there were 10,000 people for every computer, but by 2015 there will be 10,000 connected devices for every person”; that “over 50 per cent of people on the planet have never made a phone call”; that by 2020 Japan will be the oldest society in the developed world, and the USA will be the youngest.

It’s from a vast archive of such data, analysed through methods many years in the perfecting, that Bellini is able to create the “works of informed imagination” that make up his futurological output. Facts and figures, he says, are the currency of futurology and he declares that, magpie-like, he “will steal anything without remorse” which will contribute to his understanding of the myriad forces shaping the times to come.

This understanding has developed over the course of a distinguished and varied career which has seen Bellini finding success as an academic, a think-tank analyst, a reporter and TV presenter, an author, a narrator and, of course, a public speaker. If, however, this suggests chameleonic professional tendencies to accompany his corvine approach to data, Bellini’s wry grin, penetrating stare and uncompromising wit mark him out as resolutely human – as does his unwillingness to pander to social niceties: his latest book, tackling corporate deceit and the pervasiveness of misrepresentation in the business world, is appropriately titled The Bullshit Factor.

Bellini moved from university (St John’s College, Cambridge) into advertising, among other roles – but it was in Paris as the first British member of the highly regarded Hudson Institute (co-founded by Bellini’s early mentor, nuclear strategist Herman Kahn) where he won his spurs, and plaudits, with a series of predictions for major European economies, starting with France. He and his colleagues were a long way ahead of the curve in foreseeing the French economic revival of the 1970s and ‘80s, and their success did not go unnoticed; brought in by the BBC as a consultant on a similar predictive piece about the British economy, Bellini ended up fronting the program as lead reporter. Perhaps unpredictably – even for this most promising of seers – television, and a modicum of fame, had come knocking.

Although he discusses his successes with disarming humility, Bellini’s career in television left him much to crow about: seven years as a studio presenter with Sky News and Financial Times Television; stints presenting Panorama, Newsnight and The Money Programme; and a host of awards including the Prince Rainier II Prize at the Monte Carlo International TV festival and a special award given by the United Nations for his work on the epic documentary series The Nuclear Age – as well as rather less glittering roles such as presenting a TV version of Cluedo. Meanwhile he continued to predict, to analyse – and to publish, with a series of well-received tomes reaching the shelves from the 1980s onwards.

By now Bellini had established a reputation as one of the most perceptive and intuitive pundits on the current affairs circuit, and the step to public speaking to compliment his flourishing literary career was a logical one. His natural flair for business (he has served in executive positions for numerous companies) and for communications, combined with his specific spheres of interest, mean that – although he’s just as happy to present to the likes of Greenpeace “for a cup of tea”- his natural constituency consists of relatively high-powered businessfolk with a vested interest in understanding the foundations of the future (exactly the kind of people attending Shared Services Week, in fact)....

Early on Friday the famous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free) sign that hung over the entrance gate to the Auschwitz camp, was stolen.

Commenting to the BBC on the theft of the Auschwitz sign, Rabbi Andrew Baker, the Director of the International Jewish Affairs of the rabid Zionist American Jewish Committee maintained that there should be no replicas to substitute the entrance monument. “There can be no copies or reproductions; visitors must see only what was real. In that way they will be bear witness to the very objects and structures which in turn remain the mute eyewitness to what happened there”.

Rabbi Baker wants the “real thing”. However, every person who happens to be brave enough to step into the muddy topic known as Holocaust history, is quick to discover the embarrassing fact that lies at the heart of the Auschwitz museum experience: the gas chamber on display is no less than a reconstruction built after the war by the soviets. The original gas chambers were destroyed by the Germans in October 1944 just before their evacuation.

The following extract is taken from an ultra kosher Zionist Holocaust memorial site:

“In late 1944 (17 October 1944), the SS, on orders from Berlin, dynamited all the still functioning gas chambers to destroy any evidence of the killing that had happened there.”

Here is an attempt by, again, another ultra kosher Zionist memorial site to deal with the fact that Auschwitz Crematorium 1 is a reconstruction.

“After the war, when the Main Camp was turned into a museum, the authorities felt that a crematorium was required at the end of the memorial journey for visitors. Since the four cremas/gas chambers where most of the mass murder of the Jews took place lay in Birkenau two miles away, they couldn't be used for that purpose…..The chimney, the gas chamber room, the doors, and four of the openings in the roof which had been used to pour in the Zyklon-B were restored. Two of the three ovens were rebuilt. The ovens were not hooked up to the chimney as it was not an operating facility.”

The Memorial site concludes, “Crema 1 in Auschwitz I (the Main Camp) is not a "fake" but a restored space meant to be a memorial and symbolic representation of all the gas chambers and crematoria in the Auschwitz complex.”

Some historians debate as to the original function of the ruined gas chambers. I would save myself from commenting on the subject. First, I am not a historian. Second, I am far more concerned by the systematic destruction of the Palestinian people by those who survived the Holocaust. This continuous shoa that is curried out by the Israelis, in the name of Jewish suffering, is taking place right in front of our eyes.

Yet, one thing is clear beyond doubt. For the last six decades tourists have been visiting a gas chamber that was built after the war by the Soviets. As far as the Auschwitz museum is concerned, people haven’t been witnessing the ‘real thing’.

Accordingly, I would advise Rabbi Baker to revise his demand. The Auschwitz Museum experience is founded on a “copy” and a “replica” or in other words “a restored space meant to be a memorial and symbolic representation”.

For the last three decades Auschwitz has been operating as a tourist resort. It has its Holiday Tourist Guide, ‘near by’ hotels, Hot Dog stand, recommended restaurants and so on. Considering Auschwitz has achieved the status of a successful tourist attraction, I would regard the theft of the entrance monument as a major opportunity. I suggest the current staff at Auschwitz prepare for a mass of tourists to come. I propose creating many more gate facilities decorated with entrance monuments. In the spirit of multiculturalism and global markets, each entrance can be accompanied by a real McDonalds for the American crowd, a genuine pub for the Brits, an authentic Nandos for chicken lovers and Maoz Falafel for the Israeli youngsters who are sent year after year to brew in Jewish suffering just before they join the IDF. It is in Auschwitz where young Israelis fuel themselves with enough hatred so they can punish the Palestinians for crimes committed by Europeans.

Professor Stauffer is angry at me; I mean really angry. He’s furious that I don’t think more highly of his and Sally Jenkins’s book, State of Jones, but especially that I have the temerity to publicly say so. To get it all off his chest, he just let off more steam on page 2 of the December 10th issue of the Jones County ReView.

Why, he even called me a gadfly–again. His definition: one who ”builds her reputation by constantly annoying, irritating, or slandering others.” Well, I prefer Socrates’ description of the gadfly’s role:  ”to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth.” Under those terms, I plead guilty, having criticized the sloppiness of his research and the distortions of his arguments. That’s what reviewers (and gadflies) are expected to do, when warranted, in our profession.

Professor Stauffer claims that he and Sally Jenkins have in turn treated my work with respect. Go back and listen to you and your co-author’s remarks about me in your interviews last May and June with Mike Noirot of This Mighty Scourge, and on NPR’s Diane Rehm show. Who are you kidding?

Aside from gadfly, what I really am is a history professor who has taught at the same university (in that “small Texas town” he sneeringly mentions) for almost 24 years; a historian who has written three books published by the University of North Carolina Press, a premier academic press.

I could say more about my credentials, but then I’d begin to sound like Stauffer, who ritualistically trots his out. So let’s get to the point. Mr. Stauffer says that I have slandered him. As he kindly explains for us, that means “saying something false or malicious that damages somebody’s reputation.”  He then proceeds to attribute words to me that I have never uttered (how’s that for slander?)! Such as that I “dismissed” him and Ms Jenkins as “Yankees and carpetbaggers.” Mr. Stauffer is not only confused, he repeats himself a lot. You can read my response to these and other phony charges by clicking here.

There is a new charge against me. Stauffer now accuses me of having launched a “blitzkreig” against his and Jenkins’s work on the Internet. Gee, all I did was review their book. They were the ones who asked Kevin Levin of Civil War Memory to let them post a response to that 3-part review, and Kevin graciously did just that. An internet debate followed in which the authors and I, and anyone else who cared to, participated.

So, what’s all this talk about me refusing to debate? Seems to me we’ve already had that debate. Virtually every charge that Stauffer raises anew in his ReView column I have answered either on Renegade South or Civil War Memory. In any case, Mr. Stauffer has never extended an invitation, as he claims, to debate me face-to-face. Now, Mark Thornton, the editor of the Jones County ReView, did once extend such an invitation–Oh, my, has Mr. Stauffer appropriated Mr. Thornton’s idea as his own? Tsk, tsk, imagine that.

Having misrepresented not just the history of Jones County, but also the history of the present debate, Stauffer goes on to confidently proclaim my book, Free State of Jones, a failure. Most remarkable are his standards for that judgment: sales figures and fame. You see, my university press book hasn’t sold nearly the copies that his mass-produced, media-hyped Doubleday version has.  

Here I was, thinking it was great that people from around the United States continue to contact me eight years after Free State of Jones was published. But, no, Stauffer assures us that my book was “virtually unknown outside of Jones County, the Texas town where she teaches, and a community of some 50 scholars who write on Southern Unionists.” Why, he says, I was just a poor little nobody who had never even had my name in the New York Times (just imagine!) before he and Ms. Jenkins opened the door to fame and fortune for me. Silly me for thinking that fame and fortune have about as much to do with high-quality scholarship and history as pop stardom does with perfect pitch. Mr. Stauffer can explain that, too: he says I simply don’t understand his book’s ”genre.”

Despite Professor Stauffer’s tactics, which represent the worst in academic class snobbery, one might expect that he, an academic himself, would understand that the vast majority of historians don’t spend years in graduate school because they hope to write bestsellers that will entertain the masses.

Which reminds me. Years ago, when I was in the final years of my Ph D work at the University of California, San Diego, I proudly wore a shirt sold at conferences by Radical History Review.  The logo on the front featured Karl Marx holding a copy of the Review and the words “Earn Big Money; Become a Historian.” My fellow graduate students and I loved that shirt–it epitomized the passion we felt for the research and writing of history. No, we were not in it for the money.

(To see a copy of the t-shirt logo, visit Radical History Review and scroll to the bottom of their page. You might even want to order one for yourself!)

The same, evidently, can’t be said for all history professors. For some, it is, rather, all about the money.

It all comes down to this: John Stauffer and I have very different approaches to the profession of history, and I have a very different personal story from his, one that he apparently can’t fathom from his lofty Harvard perch. You see, I earned a PhD the hard way–as a divorced mother of two children and the daughter of parents who, through no fault of their own, never graduated from high school. It may surprise Mr. Stauffer to learn that I never aspired to be either an Ivy League professor or a bestselling author; that my hard-won goals were to write honest, deeply-researched histories about ordinary people of the past who acted in extraordinary ways, and to teach students from backgrounds similar to mine that intellectuals are not confined to elite institutions.

Mr. Stauffer, in contrast, evidently loves to write about poor, downtrodden folks from the past, yet exhibits contempt for present-day renegades who have beat the odds, achieved success on their own terms, and have the gall to proclaim a flawed book just that–no matter who wrote it.

Why, Mr. Stauffer, you’re all lit up like a Christmas tree, and all because of the words of this little old Texas gadfly.

With the sting of truth,

Click on the Source link above to download an iPhone App for Juan Cole's blog.

(Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.)

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

FP: Victor Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Hanson: Glad to be here again.

FP: Sarah Palin is, clearly, carving out a national presence right now. It’s not just the appeal of her book, but also her outspokenness on the Copenhagen conference and other issues. What do you think she might be up to? And what is she tapping into? What are her possibilities?

Hanson: I think she taps into a current of populist unhappiness in the country with Washington insiders, Big Money, and condescending elites in the media and popular culture. The Wasilla mom of five, married to the snow-mobile champ, is simply the antithesis of all that. She senses the general disgust with an insider class that has nearly bankrupted the country through insane federal spending and equally insane financial speculation. She resonates in this regard mostly through an authentic middle-class upbringing, the real-world living of Alaska, natural intelligence, spunk and drive that sent one from the Wasilla city-council to the governorship of Alaska—and common sense answers like less government, lower taxes, more self-reliance, and national confidence.

Her can-do “let’s develop our own energy and spend no more than we earn” creed has a reassurance in these days. People root for her. The Ivy-Leaguers in government, whether the lawyer Obama or the economist Summers, haven’t exactly wowed the public with their studied brilliance so far.

Palin feels at ease with Middle America, and in a strange way is the antithesis to Barack Obama. Both are young, and charismatic, and appeal to populist constituencies. But whereas Obama came out of a Honolulu prep school and elite Ivy League hot-house, and had to acquire, quite artificially, his street credentials at the foot of Rev. Wright and in the Chicago scratch-back world of Valerie Jarrett and Mayor Daley, Palin was a true product of the working class and took on rather than swam into the status quo political structure.

That fact was sadly lost in 2008, but it is starting to ring true as her popularity rises and Obama’s declines. Remember, though, these are mostly perceptions still, and Palin will have to give long interviews, do debates, lecture, write, and show a public grasp of the issues in the way that earlier charismatic, non-career politicians like Eisenhower and Reagan could—in contrast to flash in the pans like a Wesley Clark. For 2008 and much of 2009 the left and the media successfully caricatured her as a creationist, white-supremacist, Christianist nut, but that demonization is wearing off. Quite simply, the more the public sees her, the more it likes her—and that’s not true of most politicians like a Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid—or Barack Obama.

FP: Can you expand a bit on what is it that the liberal-Left hates so much about Palin?

Hanson: Well, well, let us count the ways:

1) Feminists resent her stance on abortion, not just her pro-life views, but the fact she delivered a challenged child in her 40s and her teen-daughter delivered an out of wedlock boy; for many professional women on the up and up, those decisions are not just absurd but scary.

2) The elite Left was furious over her populist appeal, particularly her charm, good looks, accent, and appearance. In sum, their view was “don’t hoi polloi know, as we do, that this glitzy thing is a moose-hunting mom with an Idaho BA? To a Maureen Dowd or Sally Qunin, a Christian mom, who hunts, lives in Alaska, and is married to Todd is OK—but not OK if she thinks she can come east and run their US.

3) She’s an interloper outside the normal cursus honorum. Almost all our female columnists, many of our politicians, and several of our TV personalities either married into, or were born into, influence and can trace some of their careers to the wealth or influence of powerful husbands, fathers, and mentors. Not Palin—she had no family or marital connections, no money, no powerful fixer, she’s a genuine up-from-the-bootstraps sort of feminist that, oddly, feminists don’t define as feminist.

4) Conservative, attractive women, with traditional marriages and child-raising, for a variety of reasons, earn media scorn;

4) She scares the Left by her star power; few in America can fill stadia like she can—and that worries the powers that be. Populism is supposed to be a leftist phenomenon, but when a conservative resonates with the folks, that raises concern.

5) Finally, her accent, her demeanor, her poorly prepared interviews with Couric and Gibson all cemented for many intellectuals and cultural grandeess, both left and right, the idea that she was hickish. Many tsk-tsked her in snobbish disdain.

FP: What do you think of Palin?

Hanson: I both admire and worry about her. She has exuberance and natural intelligence, coupled with energy and toughness and a certain fearlessness, and doesn’t seem to be a trimmer, but consistently articulates a common-sense position on the issues. On the other hand, she has so many obstacles in a strictly political sense to overcome. She is based thousands of miles away from New York and Washington. She is the mother of 5 and has little money, or powerful friends. The East-Coast Right dislikes her as much as the liberal elite. With young children, the Levi Johnston mess, the resignation from the governorship, the constant traveling to earn an income for her large dependencies, she is burning the candle at both ends. So I admire her pluck, but again worry that her present frenzied pace is unsustainable.

FP: What advice would you give to Palin?

Hanson: After her book tour ends and she has earned some money, I wish she would hunker down somewhere to write, recharge and contemplate things. A month at Hillsdale College, for example, where, in friendly and supportive surroundings, she could debate, talk to faculty, read and write would be wonderful, or in fact a month almost anywhere she could review issues, have her views tested and debated, and do some in depth reading and discussion would be great.

If she wrote a weekly column or did a bi-weekly radio address, in the fashion of Reagan, that too would allow her to both support her family and at the same time master the intricacies of modern national politics. She has so many gunning for her, that she needs to be proactive. Joe Biden did not know that FDR was not President in 1929 or that TV was still experimental—but given his status, the media shucked “Oh, that’s just Joe!” Obama can be clueless about state geography, a 50-state union, or the basics of US history, but that’s because “he’s tired and has so much on his mind.” Wasilla moms has no such margin of error.

The good news is that she is so energetic, naturally talented, and charismatic, that, with a few weeks prep, she could redo the Couric interview and sparkle. What happened in 2008, was that she went from a supportive populace in Alaska to a hostile prime-time lion’s den, without proper appreciation that she was the antithesis of most of the values and lifestyles of those who would write and comment on her—and they were waiting for her in a way I think she did not anticipate. That said, I think we can already see that she is becoming media-savvy and picking her venues carefully.

FP: Victor Hanson, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

In his book The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers, historian Thomas Fleming examines the personal lives of six familiar names in history: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Fleming examines how their relationships with their wives and families affected their roles in founding the country. Fleming, an author of numerous books, spoke to The Hill about his latest tome:

How did you pick these six men to profile?

They’re the six generally agreed on as the six major Founding Fathers. … You had to draw the line somewhere. Six seemed to be a very good [number]. And they really did the most important things.

Did they have any common characteristics?

They really don’t have any truly common characteristics. The striking thing is how different they all are one from another.

So what were the striking differences?

The startling difference is they are different ages, for one thing. Franklin was by far the oldest. He was almost 30 years older than Washington. Madison was much younger than Washington, and Hamilton was almost a boy. He was 22 when he became Washington’s aide in 1777.

These are men who have had volumes of books written about them. How did you decide what to include and what to exclude?

As a novelist I was very interested in insights into the personal lives of people. … I was doing research into how people thought and felt in these distant eras. … I hadn’t really looked at what was going on behind them in their personal lives. And this book is a perfect example, if I may say so, of my ability to blend … those two sides … to look at these men’s personal lives through the eyes of the historian.

I like how you included equal information about their wives and mothers.

It gives a depth to the portrait we have of them.

Since you’ve written so much about this time period, was there anything you learned that surprised you?

It’s full of surprises for both the writer and the reader. The perfect example is the opening. … I knew that Washington had written this letter to Sally Fairfax but I had no idea when it had gotten into the historical arena, so I started doing research and I found out it appeared in the 1870s. … It was in the New York Herald, the biggest newspaper of the time, this letter, this Washington love letter. And then you followed this sensation it caused that George Washington wrote this love letter — not to his wife — but to the wife of his close friend. He wrote it four months after he got engaged to Martha.

Was it really a love letter?

Not all historians agree what this letter means. … I think it’s very convincing that this was a love letter written by a man on the verge of going into battle.

I noticed you quoted a lot of letters in your book.

That’s the great thing about picking these six Founding Fathers: All of their collections are in the process of being published. … But one of the surprising things is that the letters of some of these women have been collected. … There are sources that make you feel like you’re in touch with historical reality.

Not all these men were born to wealthy or prominent families?

Some were, but Hamilton — you couldn’t get much more poorer than Hamilton down there in the West Indies.

He had a tough childhood.

He was orphaned at 14 or 15 and had no money at all. He was supported by a relative who felt sorry for him and his brother. His father was just a colossal failure in business. And, as I say in the book, his mother was quite a dame … she kicked [Hamilton’s father] out of bed and he just left. It just gave you a depth and more much insight into … what Hamilton had to deal with in his life.

Out of these six men, did you have a favorite?

I always like to say you respect Washington immensely and admire him. … But Franklin was my favorite. You’ll love him. You’ll love Ben Franklin.

Why’s that?

He’s so funny, so witty, so charming. He had the ability to say the right thing. He was especially good at saying the right thing to women and teasing them and so forth. … He had a wife in London who he didn’t marry and a wife in Philadelphia that he outgrew.

I was surprised to read Franklin was quite the ladies’ man.

His reputation as a ladies’ man has gotten out of control, I’m afraid — mostly because of John Adams and all the vicious things he wrote about Franklin in France. ... [I]n France, these French women adored him. They loved his banter.

What was Adams’s reaction?

Adams couldn’t deal with this. He just went nuts. He wrote these scandalous letters about Franklin.

Were there any other feuds between the men you wrote about?

Washington and Jefferson just went at each other. They became deadly enemies before it was over.

How did their feud get started?

Jefferson was so infuriated at the way Hamilton had persuaded Washington to do things his way. So he goes to see the president and he sits down, talks for one solid hour, damning Hamilton any way he can think of … and Washington listens without saying a word and then at the end he says: “Mr. Jefferson, I have listened very carefully to everything you have said and I’m sorry to tell you I don’t agree with a word of it.” … Jefferson couldn’t deal with it. He resigned after that rebuff. Jefferson did not like the kind of the president Washington was. Jefferson saw him as kinglike. Jefferson was absolutely paranoid about federal power.

So sex scandals haven’t changed much in 200 years?

The really big scandal was Hamilton. He had a lack of confidence in himself as far as being a faithful husband was concerned because [of] what he had seen growing up. I think there’s another side to Hamilton’s affair with this woman.

Why’s that?

I think it has a lot to do with the fact he met Maria Reynolds, the woman he had the affair with, at the peak of his political victory. ... He had restored America’s finances, the stock market was going out of sight. He was a miracle worker. He was having political ecstasies.

Modern politicians seem to have those too.

I think there is a connection between politicians’ affairs and the kind of emotions they generate when they’re out there campaigning, giving speeches and so forth. … [Hamilton] wanted the kind of sexual experience he wasn’t getting from his wife that would match the political thrill.

Is the Revolutionary War your favorite time period?

... I grew up in this Irish ghetto in Jersey City. I was very proud of being Irish … but I didn’t know much about my American history. … I wanted to become as American as I was Irish and I really devoted the main portion of my life to it.