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Of Congress, Steroids, and Anticommunism: Preserving the American Way of Life

by Ron Briley

Cameras flash, and reporters crowd around the celebrities summoned before a Congressional committee. The politicians assert that hearings are necessary in order to protect the youth of the nation from the alleged misdeeds of the witnesses. On the other hand, critics of the congressional inquiry argue that the celebrity status of those testifying may simply provide the representatives with media exposure and serve their reelection bids. Some dignitaries are reluctant participants, dragged befo

George W. Bush: Last President of the 20th Century

by Carl Luna

Last year I was asked to contribute chapters on three modern Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush) to a new collaborative volume entitled

In Defense of Academic Freedom at Harvard

by Stephan Thernstrom

These comments were made at the March 15, 2005 meeting of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science. Many of the criticisms of President Summers involve his personality and management style. But I will focus exclusively on the issue raised by his remarks at the National Bureau of Economic Research in January. That is the issue I address because it raises crucial questions about something I thought we all cherished--academic freedom. Academic Freedom is on trial here, and a victory for Pr

Social Security, George W. Bush--And the "L" Word (No, Not Liberalism)

by Robert Brent Toplin

Millions of Americans who view Social Security as one of the most successful programs ever created by the U.S. government find current talk about its supposed failures puzzling. They recognize that the system is generally healthy today, and they understand that some minor adjustments in future years can sustain it long past the middle of the twenty-first century, the time when shortfalls will likely develop because of an aging population. Yet President Bush continues to make frightening pred

Why So Many Find the Anti-Evolution Argument Appealing

by Charles A. Israel

After the recent court ruling ordering the removal of evolution disclaimer stickers from district biology textbooks, the Cobb County (Ga.) School Board denounced the case as “an unnecessary judicial intrusion into local control of schools.” The case is currently under appeal to the 11th Circuit. The stickers in question were placed in the books in 2002 when the district finally bought texts actually describing evolution. Under pressure from parents (in the form of 2300 pe

Should a Soldier Who Changes His Mind About War Have a Right to Status as a Conscientious Objector?

by Staughton Lynd

Everybody knows the conscientious objector. We recall the Quaker wife in High Noon, who objected to all killing until her husband supposedly showed her that sometimes violence is the only way. Or we think of the Amish elder in Witness who spoke with horror of persons who use a "gun of the hand," or handgun. Conscientious objection is defined in United States military regulations as objection to "war in any form," based on "religious training

How History Was Used by All Sides in the Supreme Court Debate About the 10 Commandments

by Anne Lagaisse

Last week the United States Supreme Court considered two cases which concerned the placement of the 10 Commandments in public settings on government property. One case involved the display of the 10 Commandments in a glass case at a courthouse in Kentucky. The other involved a monument on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin. Lawyers on all sides of the issue, including members of the Court, used history to bolst

When Did Social Security Become the Third Rail of American Politics?

by Rick Shenkman

In 1964 Barry Goldwater lost the presidency in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson in part because of the perception that Goldwater was hostile to Social Security. But it wasn't until the early 1980s that Social Security became known as the third rail of American politics. It was House Speaker Tip O'Neill who coined the phrase and O'Neill who, more than anyone, made Social Security murderous to touch.In 1980 Ronald Reagan had campaigned for the presidency on a pledge to preserve Social Security

Why Privatizing Social Security Is a Terrible Idea

by Max Skidmore

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, he launched the most ambitious program of social reform in the country’s history. It was destined also to become the most popular and the most successful, and to operate with unparalleled efficiency. There was strong opposition, but it became muted after the unprecedented FDR landslide in 1936. The opposition did not die, though; it went underground. It emerged a generation later, when encouraged by t

How Social Security Was Defended by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson

by John Q. Barrett

Social Security, which grew out the political leadership and humane vision of Justice Robert Jackson’s great patron and friend FDR, has been a centerpiece of American life and law since the late 1930s. When Roosevelt took office in 1933, the country was at the depths of the Great Depression. Tens of millions of people, including many elderly, were living in poverty and desperation.In January 1935, Roosevelt advocated the U.S. government using tax payments from employers and wor

The Danger in President's Bush's Conviction He's Right

by Tom Palaima

President Lyndon Johnson once told us,"Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact." What did these simple words mean for us during LBJ's Vietnam War presidency? What might they mean for us now during President Bush's"war for democracy" in the Middle East? President Johnson had a superb grasp of the gritty realities of democratic government. He was the quintessential self-made man of power. His own

Why Some PR Professionals Are Furious with the Bush Administration

by Bob Batchelor

George W. Bush earned an MBA from Harvard University. He then ran several organizations and sat on the boards of directors of others before becoming the nation’s chief executive. With decades of management experience, it is reasonable to expect that along the way Bush would have learned the value of public relations and a little about the ethical questions central to the field. Instead, over the course of about a week, several investigations revealed that the administration eithe

Is Evolution "Just a Theory"?

by Edward J. Larson

"Evolution is just a theory," is the refrain heard in countless conservative Christian churches. "It is guesses strung together," orator William Jennings Bryan liked to say during America's first anti-evolution crusade in the 1920s. The refrain continues today. Within America's growing conservative Christian subculture, best selling authors on scientific topics repeat the refrain. Creationist Henry Morris revived it with co-author John Whitcomb in their still popular 1961

The Good News for Democrats About 2004 Was that Lots of Small Donors Gave Money. The Bad News Was Why They Gave

by Robert Mutch

In last year’s campaign, people who gave less than $200 were bigger news than the $2,000 donors and the Rangers, Pioneers, and Trustees who rounded them up. Is the rising number of small donors just a blip? Or does it mean long-term change in the way we pay for election campaigns? Nearly everyone agrees that small contributions would be the best way to pay for campaigns. But no presidential campaign -- no winning campaign, anyway -- has ever been funded this wa

Ward Churchill's Comments--And the General's

by Ron Briley

Right-wing pundits are flexing their political muscles and publicly calling for the firing of University of Colorado professor Wade Churchill. (Click here and here.) The attacks have already taken their toll. Churchill’s speaking engagement was cancelled at Hamilton College in New York State, he has resigned as chairman of the university’s ethnic studies department, and Colora

The Disturbing Parallels Between University Speech Codes and Old South Demands to Limit Freedom of Speech

by Charles W. Nuckolls and David T. Beito

"In the South,” Faulkner said, “the past is not dead. It isn't even past." How true, especially when the segregationist legislation of the early 1950s reappears in the guise of protection against hate speech. Recently, the Faculty Senate of the University of Alabama passed a resolution calling for restrictions on speech that might be offensive to someone. The irony is that the new rules duplicate, almost word for word, laws passed by hysterical southern legislators in r

Just How Big an Impact Do Pictures of War Have on Public Opinion?

by David D. Perlmutter

News pictures can be problems for modern statesmen. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld lamented to Congress in May 2004, "We're functioning with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements, in a wartime situation in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they have not even arrived in the Pentagon."

Why Democrats Are at a Disadvantage When the Media Just Report "Both Sides"

by Robert Mutch

This may not be the dirtiest presidential election ever, but the level of political discourse isn't what makes the current campaign different. Rather, it's how that discourse is, or isn't, paid for. Although charges that Bill and Hillary Clinton were murderous drug runners might have set a new standard for vicious dishonesty, not to mention hilarity, historians of American politics prefer to look further back. Most agree that the benchmark for dirt was established by the John

Why Is Opposition to the War in Iraq Seemingly So Muted (Compared with Vietnam?)

by Robert Brent Toplin

Many have pointed out that our current problems in Iraq resemble the nation’s earlier difficulties in Vietnam, but few have observed that conditions at home in the U.S. today are quite different than those of forty years ago. Strong public resistance to an unpopular foreign intervention, so evident in the 1960s, is missing. We hear familiar sounds of war in Iraq but not many familiar sounds of protest in the USA. When Americans questioned the morality of their nation’s po

Will the American People Forgive Howard Dean for His Scream?

by Nancy C. Unger

Howard Dean's current bid to chair the Democratic National Committee is a test case of his political viability. It's his first political quest since a spirited speech, endlessly rebroadcast and lampooned, derailed his innovative and well-funded 2004 presidential campaign. Virtually no account of Dean's current candidacy has failed to mention his "I Have a Scream" performance and the subsequent collapse of his presidential campaign. It has seemed that the image of Dean whoopi