News at Home

In New Orleans, Once Again, the Irony of Southern History

by Christopher Morris

Once again the entire country is confronted with the legacy of Reconstruction. It is too simple to chalk the tragedy that continues to unfold in New Orleans to the force of nature, or to an unfathomable God. Hurricanes, like earthquakes, tornadoes, eruptions, and tsunamis, do come, but who or what sends them is only half the story. Such disasters whatever their origin smash into worlds of our making. What they do when they make landfall, what they meet when they reach the coast, is lar

One History Professor's Experience with the Katrina Relief Effort

by Karen Kossie-Chernyshev

It is Saturday night, September 3, approximately 8:40 PM.  My husband and I have just arrived at the George R. Brown Convention Center, the second public facility designated for Katrina evacuees.  My goal is to pick up a schedule to plan my volunteer activities and to help my Texas Southern University students do the same.  I want all of us not only to participate in this unprecede

Tulane: Caught in the Middle of a Disaster

by Bonnie Goodman

This past week hurricane Katrina ripped through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with New Orleans suffering some of the worst devastation as water levels rose throughout the city, leading to an unprecedented peace-time order to evacuate the entire area.. Students at Tulane University were set to start classes this week. At first the university was hopeful that it would be possible to resume classes on September 1. Soon that date was pushed back to September 7, but with 80 percent of the city f

How FDR Handled the Fallout from the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935

by Willie Drye

As the sun climbed above the hills of the Hudson River Valley on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1935, a special train carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt rolled to a stop at the station at Highland. Congress had recently ended its longest session in more than a decade and the president had finally escaped the stifling summer heat of Washington, D.C. He was looking forward to spending Labor Day at Springwood, his home overlooking the Hudson River in Hyde Park. FDR planned to combine pleasure and business during an extended stay. The president was unusually skilled at handling the press, and a softball game pitting administration officials against White House correspondents was planned on the lawn of his home on Wednesday, Sept. 4. Roosevelt also would be busy with politics, however. An election year was only a few months away, and the president intended to work on a series of speeches that would lay the groundwork for his announcement that he would run for a second term in 1936.

The Political Rehabilitation of Joseph Rotblat

by Lawrence S. Wittner

By the time of his death, which occurred on August 31, 2005, Joseph Roblat was a revered figure. A top nuclear physicist, Rotblat received—among many other honors and awards--a British knighthood and, together with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (an organization that he had helped to found), the Nobel Peace Prize (1995). As the president of the Pugwash conferences recalled: “Joseph Rotblat was a towering figure in the search for peace in the world, who dedica

Caught between Loyalty and Sedition: Patriotic Politicians Who Have Dissented During Wartime

by Ed Pompeian

Many critics of the Iraq War are struggling to oppose the war while continuing to sound patriotic. How have leading figures in the past balanced criticism and loyalty during wartime? In this article we take a look at the responses of Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and J. William Fulbright .Edmund Burke Edmund Burke is best known for his conservative critique of the French, who he believed irresponsibly abandoned

The Mess on the Mall

by Andrew Ferguson

IF YOU WANT A VISION of hell, look here: the national mall in Washington, D.C., at noon on a summer's day. Mom and Dad and Buddy and Sis stand on the treeless expanse, baked by the pitiless sun, looking lost. Dad wears a muscle-beach T-shirt stretched over a Cheesecake Factory body, his hair matted in shiny ringlets round the crown of his head. Sweat begins to show at the waistband of Mom's stretch pants. The air is hung with scrims of haze. To one side the Capitol building shimmers in ghostly o

Is Organized Labor Fighting Mad?

by James Ottavio Castagnera

The Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act and the National Labor Relations Act were passed as a part of the New Deal of the 1930s. Prior to their passage, most private-sector labor organizations relied on their muscle to move employers to the negotiation table. During the late 1860s and 1870s, the Molly Maguires burned breakers, blew bridges and beat up mine bosses in the anthracite coal patches of eastern Pennsylvania, until more than 20 of them were tried and hanged at the county seats of Potts

Jazz Was Denounced by Some Black Leaders, too

by Thaddeus Russell

A leading African American newspaper published a series of articles assailing black musicians for holding back the race. The music"is killing some people," the paper claimed."Some are going insane; others are losing their religion." The artists under attack were not rappers such as 50 Cent or Ludacris but Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington."The young girls and boys who constantly take jazz every day and night are absolutely becoming bad, and some criminals," the (New York) A

Quotations: The Power to Make War

by HNN Staff

The following quotations are taken from Alexander DeConde's Presidential Machismo: Executive Authority; Military Intervention, and Foreign Relations (2000). Mr. DeConde observes: The framers did not view the title of commander in chief as conferring control over the power to declare or instigate war. They perceived it as amounting to "nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces" so as

It's Not How to Make a Bomb That's the Problem

by Ann Larabee

Following the recent bombings in London, Britain's home secretary, Charles Clarke, rushed to announce plans for sweeping new terrorist legislation that would criminalize downloading bomb-making instructions from the Internet. Once again, the Internet has become the target of law makers who seek a simple remedy for making a complex world safe again.   If only it were so easy. A major flaw in blaming the Internet for terrorist bomb making is that no one has ever sufficiently demon

Egads! UFO Believers Are Now Joining with Occultists and Others in a Giant Festival of Paranoia

by Daniel Pipes

Some people believe in the lost continent of Atlantis and in unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Others worry about an eighteenth-century secret society called the Bavarian Illuminati or a mythical Zionist-Occupied Government secretly running the United States. What if these disparate elements shared beliefs, joined forces, won a much larger audience, broke out of their intellectual and political ghetto, and became capable of challenging the premises of public life in the United States? Th

Why Vietnam Haunts the Debate Over Iraq

by David Greenberg

The Vietnam War is again dividing the country, this time by analogy. Doves liken the Iraqi occupation to the Indochina debacle. Hawks tick off the obvious differences. All this comparing and contrasting shouldn't be surprising. A law of rhetorical entropy seems to decree that every American war since 1975–Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan—tends toward comparison with Vietnam. Indeed, for more than a year, hardly a month has pass

Bush Has Some Gall

by P. M. Carpenter

George gave a little speech in Ohio last week, questioning John’s leadership fitness. The elected senator from Massachusetts, charged the pseudo-president from Texas, would disrupt the economy and conduct an “uncertain” foreign policy “in the face of danger.”Oh my. Things could actually get worse? Like, I suppose, John might launch an ill-conceived, ill-planned, unnecessary war? Perhaps invade Brazil if Cuba attacks? Fiddle as our industrial base

Presidents Who Have Visited War Zones

On Thanksgiving Day 2003 President Bush visited Baghdad on a surprise visit to the troops occupying Iraq. Below is a list of several other presidents who have visited war zones.   On October 3, 1862 President Lincoln visited Antietam.

In Praise of the Bush National Security Strategy

by John Lewis Gaddis

It's an interesting reflection on our democratic age that nations are now expected to publish their grand strategies before pursuing them. This practice would have surprised Metternich, Bismarck, and Lord Salisbury, though not Pericles. Concerned about not revealing too much, most great strategists in the past have preferred to concentrate on implementation, leaving explanation to historians. The first modern departure from this tradition came in 1947 when George F. Kennan revealed

Why We Began a Petition to Congress

by Joyce Appleby

Last week at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President Bush expressed exasperation at reporters' questions about any discussion of attacking Iraq. Groping for words, the president said that the public seemed to be "kind of churning." Standing by, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chimed in with the word, frenzy, to describe the situation. It's an odd response from the very leaders who have been talking on and off about military plans to effect a "regime chan

Column: Our Cynical President

by P.M. Carpenter

There are times in the course of human events when it's best to lay aside your readings of Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard, and other philosophical mediocrities and turn instead to the truly astute--such as Philosopher-Queen Lily Tomlin, who once observed that "no matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." Let the pretentious Wittgensteins of the world futilely pen reams of convoluted thoughts in search of Pure Essence. No one will ever again top

How the Christian Right Borrowed the Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement

by David John Marley

Which groups can legitimately claim to be minority in a hostile world? Who is oppressed and who is just complaining? In a culture that loves to shift that blame, where American soldiers who tortured Iraqi POW’s claimed to be victims themselves, where does it end? If every group is a minority, and every person a victim, what does this say about the appeal of minority status in America? The great achievement of the civil rights movement was that it forced many reluctant whites to

Can We Really Get by without a Draft?

by Michael S. Foley

In this season of quagmire war and political campaigning, President Bush has a manpower problem. The Pentagon has announced that troop levels in Iraq will remain at 135,000 until the end of 2005. Thus, with the American military stretched to unprecedented limits, one of the most pressing questions in the presidential campaign will be the riddle of who will fill out the ranks of those stationed in Iraq and fighting the ongoing war on terror. Once again, we feel the lingering shadow