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Philosophy as Dynamite: A Response to Warren Hynson on Nietzsche

by Kevin Kennedy

You should love peace as a means to new wars. And a short peace more than a long one. Friedrich Nietzsche"Of Wars and Warriors”Thus Spoke ZarathustraAmidst the media hype following the tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, many journalists, bloggers, and self-styled experts pointed to the literature found on the accused shooter Jarod Loughner’s bookshelves as possible sources of inspiration for this horrific deed. One of the writers quickly accus

An America for Brisenia Flores

by Kathleen Belew

In the aftermath of the Tucson shootings, many have focused on the death of nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.  Born on 9/11 and killed by the random violence of a madman, Green has become a martyr for optimistic bipartisanship.  “I want us to live up to her expectations,” President Barack Obama told the mourners in Tucson.  “I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.”Obama cautioned us against blaming the shootings on political invective.  We cannot, he said, conn

A Rebuttal to the State of the Union

by Historians Against the War

President Obama’s State of the Union address, coming two months after his party’s defeat in the 2010 elections, makes clear that he puts a high value on winning.  He wants the United States to compete more effectively, to be number one around the world again. He wants every child to have the opportunity to compete to achieve the American dream.  He wants American industry to compete more successfully in the global marketplace.  He wants improvements to our infrastructure to create and s

America's History of Crazy Political Assassins Didn't Begin with Loughner

by James W. Clarke

Over a long academic career, I have researched and written about twenty-one American assassins, would-be assassins, and domestic terrorists.  It is pure nonsense to suggest, as some have, that the politica

What Will Civil Dialog Look Like?

by Geraldo Cadava

After all of last week's calls for civility, we should wonder how they will translate into action, particularly in Arizona.  We were moved by President Obama’s words, and inspired by his vision, but we cannot expect his speech alone to sweep away the challenges we face.  He gestured towards a healing process, but what comes next will be up to us.Over the past year, we’ve measured the heat of national politics by focusing on developments in Arizona.  During the next several months

Property Tax Discrimination and the Question of Fair Taxation

by Andrew W. Kahrl

In a recent interview with the conservative commentator George Will, the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp (R-MI), offered a revealing glimpse into the underlying assumptions on the problem of taxation our new Republican majority brings with it to Washington.  The problem, says Camp, lies not in the massive slashing of tax rates on the highest income earners from the Reagan administration to the present, but rather from the continued undertaxation of the nat

Important State of the Union Addresses in History

The addresses we remember.

Loughner’s Terrible Violence and His Misunderstanding of Nietzsche

by Warren Hynson

“God is dead.  God remains dead.  And we are the ones who killed him.”The name Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of this oft-quoted (and oft-misunderstood) assertion, has recently continued to surface in major currents of American media, particularly in the coverage of recent acts of abominable violence and the nihilistic philosophical underpinnings that their perpetrators were supposed to have personally invoked to justify them.Most recently, the New York Times fe

It's Still the Same Old Story—from Guns to Nukes

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The discussion of the Tucson tragedy should be familiar, as we witness similar massacres in U.S. schools, shopping centers, and other public places played out periodically.  Each time, the NRA and other gun apologists tell us that the easy accessibility of firearms, including assault weapons, had nothing to do with it.  Indeed, they argue that the key to our safety is to obtain more guns.But does the fact that nearly 100,000 Americans are shot with guns and nearly 10,000 Americans are killed with them each year really have no connection to the remarkable availability of guns in the United States?

Jared Lee Loughner, the Personal, and the Political

by Gregory Downs

After the first shock, the questions about Jared Lee Loughner’s attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords quickly resolved to a fami

The Founders Cared About the Majority Principle

by Joyce Appleby

When the Senate reconvenes January 24 it will have to decide whether to accept the rules reform introduced by Senators Tom Udall, Tom Harkin, and Jeff Merkley.  The target of the rules change is the filibuster, which Republicans invoked more than a hundred times in the session that ended in December. The three senators' reforms are mild correctives of this abuse of majority rule.  They would eliminate filibusters to prevent legislation from coming to the floor f

Of Course the Assassination Attempt Was Political

by David Greenberg

Of course it was political.In the Fort Hood shootings of November 2009, the right was quick to link Nidal Malik Hasan to terrorism, while the left insisted he was merely deranged. The reactions to the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others this weekend offered a mirror image: Many on the left blamed right-wing political extremism, while conservatives insisted that

The Political Fight after the Arizona Gunfight: Right Target, Wrong Trigger

by Gil Troy

The Tucson, Arizona, rampage left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded, six citizens dead, and millions of Americans jumping to the ri

The Tea Party, Patriotism and the American Protest Tradition

by Simon Hall

Historians and Filibuster Reform: Follow-Up

by Toby Ditz

On Tuesday, January 4th, one day before the start of the 112th session of Congress, Jim Grossman, Michael Kazin, and I visited the offices of Senators Udall, Harkin, and Boxer to present the petition signed by over 300 historians, political scientists, law professors, and other scholars urging reform of the procedural rules that allow a minority of senators to block legislation (aka the filibuster and its cousin, the anonymous h

Bringing Democrats and Republicans Together over Food

by William Lambers

What is on America's wish list for the New Year? Well, having Democrats and Republicans working together instead of trading jabs would be a wonderful gift. Before scrapping that wish as hopeless, consider one area where the two sides do have a history of working together:  fighting global hunger.  In fact, an international school meals program is named for former Democratic Sen. George McGovern and Republican Sen. Bob Dole. As senators, McGovern and Dole had a his

Barack Obama's Vision of America versus Lynne Cheney's

by Ian Reifowitz

Of Thee I Sing is Barack Obama’s newest book.  Dedicated to his daughters, it expresses his definition of Americanness.  Similarly, Lynne Cheney published America: A Patriotic Primer for her grandchildren in 2002.  As children’s books, neither is overtly political.  Nevertheless, the visions of national identity they present differ in subtle but profound ways.But first, the similarities:  Both books emphasize pride in America and in being American.  Both highli

It's Time for a Talk: Revitalizing America's Civic Culture

by Richard Dreyfuss

We do not teach civics in our public schools today.We define civics as those pre-partisan tools and talents that allow us to maintain the system of governance created by the members of the Constitutional Convention in 1787; among other things knowing the difference between our particular system and those that came before, whether they are

The "Masculine Journey" of Bishop Eddie Long

by Guy Mount

Editor’s Note: Eddie Long is the bishop of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch in DeKalb County, GA.  On September 22, 2010, three men filed separate lawsuits against Long alleging that the bishop “coerced” them into sexual relations. As of December 9, Long is reportedly seeking to settle the case out-of-court.

The Urgency of a Senate Rule Change

by Joyce Appleby

Pundits, public figures and the politically-oriented have awakened to the fact that a Senate procedural rule is undermining democracy in Congress.Only those who spend too much time with Roberts Rules of Order can follow the tortured route through which a principled respect for free and full debate led to a situation in which it takes agreement from 60% of the Senators to bring a bill to the floor, which in effect means that it takes a supermajority to pass all legislation, origin