News at Home

12/12 and 9/11: Tales of Power and Tales of Experience in Contemporary History

by Michael Kazin

On Wednesday September 10, 2003 Mr. Kazin gave the following address at the Library of Congress in connection with the donation of a digital 9-11 archive. (Disclosure: The archive was created by George Mason University and the City University of New York Graduate Center.) Some people may be puzzled by the title I chose for this talk. My purpose is to juxtapose the historical impact of events that took place on two highly

Column: The U.S. Must Leave Iraq Now

by P.M. Carpenter

With hat in hand, the Bush administration now wants -- or, rather, needs -- a United Nations peacekeeping force in Iraq. As all the world knows by now, only a wretched combination of lies and gross miscalculations put beleaguered American troops there to begin with, and of course that folly was compounded by the administration's postwar insistence on exclusive occupational rights. To the Bushies, Iraq was a sandbox in more than one sense, and it was all theirs to control -- at least,

Arnold's No Reagan

by Ian C. Friedman

For many Republicans, California's Oct. 7 election to recall Gov. Gray Davis and possibly elect a new governor is far more about keeping President Bush in the White House than it is about moving Hollywood superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger to California's statehouse. Enticed by the opportunity to reap the Golden State's 55 electoral votes, these Republicans believe that controlling the governorship of California will help the president carry the nation's most populous state in th

Column: An Anaconda Deficit

by P.M. Carpenter

As another week passed and another crisis came into focus, the Bush administration once again displayed its team colors as the Bad News Bears -- sans any hope of a cuddly Walter Matthau's reversal of fortunes. The informed and thus exceedingly nervous have taken to peeking at headlines with fingers crossed and a prayer muttered, imploring the gods for at least a sliver of good news for a change. But the gods and Bush II have been cruel, procreating instead one debacle after another. Ha

The Bush Administration's War on Labor

by Jonathan Rees

On the morning of April 20th, 1914, near Ludlow, Colorado, the Colorado National Guard used machine guns to attack a tent colony made up mostly of striking coal miners' families. Later, someone set fire to the tents. At least 25 people died that day, including 11 children. Many of the children suffocated in a pit under a tent where they hid to escape the flames. The aptly named "Ludlow Massacre" remains one of the most violent incidents in American labor history. T

You Call this Democracy? Vote No on the Recall

by Ellen Carol DuBois

Back in 1911, women wanted to make American politics more democratic by giving women as well as men the right to vote. That year California women got the right to vote. That same year, reformers put the recall in the Constitution, to take power out of the hands of special interests and return it to the people. Today, ninety-two years later, we need to live up to their legacy. Something is broken in American politics and the power of the franchise can fix it. But the October 7 Re

Recall the Recall

by Ruth Rosen

POLITICIANS of all political persuasions are busy invoking the legacy of Hiram Johnson, the governor of California from 1911 to 1917, who pushed the constitutional amendments for initiative, referendum and recall that California voters ratified in 1911. These reforms set the stage for the state's tradition of "direct democracy." But does anyone really know what Johnson, who became governor without ever having held public office before, really wanted the recall to d

Column: Should the Federal Government Join Gambler's Anonymous?

by William Thompson

The case of Mr. Poindexter and latest move of the federal government to get into the gambling business is troubling, but there are precedents for such bad taste.The attempt of Poindexter to set up a futures market for when or where terrorists would attack fortunately was foiled and led to his dismissal from government service. The federal government's ventures into the gambling business prior to this episode have not turned out all that well either. The fir

Column: What a Mess

by P.M. Carpenter

The right wingers, muscle flexers, ideologues, pre-emptive strikers, the bunker blasters and the jingoists -- in short, the leaderless Bushies -- have once again screwed things up. They weren't satisfied with neglecting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the boiling point, or obsessing over a non-threatening goon like Saddam Hussein while ignoring a real-threatening goon like Kim Jong Il, or dropping Afghanistan back into the Taliban's lethal hands. Those were mere previews

What Activists Can Learn from the Nuclear Freeze Movement

by Lawrence S. Wittner

Editor's Note: The following article is based on fresh research explored in the newest volume of Mr. Wittner's trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb, published by Stanford University Press. His new book is called, Toward Nuclear Abolition (2003). At the moment, the Bush administration's militaristic approach to world affairs seems triumphant. From preemptive wars against "

Would Black Leaders Be Better Off as Outsiders?

by William C. Kashatus

Next week, Americans will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. The march's signature event, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, continues to stir the nation after four decades. Yet the black community still struggles to decide whether to follow King's prophetic tradition or to lead via political office. It's a difficult choice. Should black leadership choose the latter course, forgetting King's prophetic voice would be a ser

Is Bush Wasting His Vacation?

by Matthew Pinsker

President Bush is spending most of this month at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. By fleeing the White House, he continues a tradition of more than 200 years. That's noteworthy because presidents at ease tend to reveal key aspects of their character, just as Don Van Natta's recent book on presidential golf, First off the Tee, claims. Even more important, as the case of Abraham Lincoln demonstrates, a well-structured vacation can also help shape a great president. Washington be

Blackout 2003: The Debate We Won't Be Having This Time

by HNN Staff

On Tuesday November 9, 1965, at 5:30 p.m. New York City fell dark when the Northeast was hit with a massive power failure. Lights went out across 8 states. The blackout was triggered when a relay switch in Toronto failed. Four million homes in the metropolitan area were plunged into darkness. Although the disaster cost the economy of New York City tens of millions of dollars, it is remember

Column: Why We Should Pay Attention to Al Gore

by P.M. Carpenter

Even if you still resent the former vice president for losing the 2000 election to a greenhorned featherweight of Chauncey Gardner proportions, you must give Al Gore credit for making an extraordinary contribution to political debate last week. For forty sustained minutes in his New York speech he substituted high dudgeon with calm, surgical reasoning and concluded that the president of the United States is a liar. As is cus

President George W. Bush, Historian

by Eric Rauchway

President George W. Bush put the federal government into the history-writing business when he tarred his critics in June as "revisionist historians" and derided them for trying to "rewrite history." But if they were rewriting history, who wrote it in the first place? Why, George W. Bush, of course, and it falls to us private citizens in the historical profession, as his new colleagues, to evaluate his work-in-progress, "A History of the Iraq War, 2002

Changing the Constitution to Protect Adam and Eve?

by Ralph Luker

In June, after the Supreme Court found anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas, Republican Sens. William Frist of Tennessee and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and woman. Their impulse to protect traditional marriages may seem reasonable, but it's a bad idea. Why? Because it would write into the Constitution a

What Bill O'Reilly Should Have Told Ann Coulter

by Anthony Fuentez

It used to be taken for granted that Senator Joseph R. McCarthy is one of the great villains of American history. His crime always has been assumed to be his introduction into American politics of the practice of "McCarthyism" in the midst of the campaign of the late forties and early fifties to root out the influence of the Communist Party in American institutions. Though a complex phenomenon, the central feature of McCarthyism was a rhetorical style that entailed false or

America and Islam Go Way Back

by Philip Jenkins

Though most of us think of the American relationship with Islam as a modern phenomenon, the encounter in fact goes back to the very first days of the nation. That encounter was from its first a troubled affair and involves the origins of U.S. military and diplomatic affairs. American conflicts with Muslim states in North Africa provide the opening to Max Boot's fine analysis of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, and we all probably know a little

Column: Tolerating the Intolerable: 101

by P. M. Carpenter

The commentariat, membership in which I take dubious pride, is too commonly fond of unleashing a removed, oh-so urbane attitude about skies falling all around us. We have seen this before; things have been worse; the clouds have been darker and weightier ere now; the wise remain calm -- just like us pros. Ours is an insouciance that impresses, I suppose. But, for those who don't already know this -- and the knowers tend to be the rightly outraged over climatic c

Shouldn't We Be Talking About What Colleges Teach Rather than Just Who Gets into College?

by Thomas Reeves

The U.S. Supreme Court's verdict in the University of Michigan case, upholding Affirmative Action in admissions to institutions of higher education, has received extensive analysis, much of it critical. The most formidable critiques I have read were by Carol Iannone, Stanley Rothman, Shelby Steele, and by officials of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) in their formal statement. These commentaries call attention to the myth of the magic of diversity in the classroom, to the u