Roundup: Historians' Take

Rick Shenkman: John Kerry is Right, Americans are Ignorant -- But It's Bad Politics to Say So

[Rick Shenkman is the author of"Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter" (Basic Books), vice president of VoteiQ, and editor-in-chief of HNN.] John Kerry isn’t usually someone that many people get that riled up about, so I was shocked to discover that the right-wing has decided this week to claim to take offense at his

Caroline Reeves: Bill and Warren’s Excellent (Chinese) Adventure

[Caroline Reeves is Assistant Professor of History at Emmanuel College.]Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are throwing a charity banquet in Beijing. On September 29th, the two American tycoons will host a dinner for China’s wealthiest magnates to convince them to give their monies away to charity. This event has caused a stir in the Chinese world. Everyone from movie stars to industry moguls is involved. Doonesbury

Victor Davis Hanson: So What's Next for the President?

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] The Problem. Obama succeeded in getting elected where other Northern liberals like McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry had failed because of a perfect storm of events: the novelty of our first African-American serious presidential candidate; Obama’s teleprompted rhetorical gif

Julian E. Zelizer: Fight for Middle Class Economic Security

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Arsenal of Democracy" and a book on former President Carter and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, to be published this fall by Princeton University Press.] In an extraordinarily powerful moment last Monday, a middle class mother named Velma Hart confronted the president for whom she had enthusiastically voted.

Nigel Hamilton: American Caesars

[Nigel Hamilton’s"American Caesars: Lives of the Presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush" is now available (Yale University Press)]The much-vaunted "Pledge to America" is long on platitudes and faux-patriotism -- the notion that your political opponents are not patriots. It sickens me.Worst of all, in my view as an historian who has studied the last seventy years of American empire, is the utter indifference the "Pledge" shows to America's pla

Thomas E. Woods Jr.: Tea and Anarchy

[Thomas E. Woods Jr. is the author of ten books, including the just released Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century.]According to Slate editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, a specter is haunting America: the specter of anarchism. Not real anarchism – that’s Weisberg’s emotional hypochondria at work – but merely

Harry Verhoeven: UN Report on Rwanda Genocide Threatens Stability in Central Africa

[Harry Verhoeven is a doctoral student at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. He heads the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN) is co-authoring a research project on the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, “Point of No Return. Kabila, the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Internal Dynamics of the Great African War.”] Until recently, President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) were the international community’s aid

Robert Zaretsky: In Praise of Laziness

[Robert Zaretsky is professor of history at the University of Houston's Honors College. He is author, most recently, of Albert Camus: Elements of a Life.] All history is contemporary history -- even for histories the future still holds in store for us. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the publication in France of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou. The book's subject -- everyday life in an isolated village in 14th-century France -- as well as its narrative (there isn't one)

Walter Russell Mead: China in the Kaiser's Footsteps

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] Is China the best friend of American power? Beijing’s recent missteps in Asia — moving ahead with reactor sales to troubled Pakistan and crudely threatening Japan over the arrest of a Chinese fishing captain — are swiftly solidifying America’s Asian all

Jack Davis: Treat the Gulf Right and It Will Return the Favor

[Jack Davis is a professor of history at the University of Florida and author of An Everglades Provenance: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century.] Somewhere beneath Gulf of Mexico waters lies the archive of Spanish West Florida. When Americans invaded Pensacola in 1818, Spanish officials fled for Cuba. Intercepted en route by pirates, they heaved the colony’s records overboard. The watery resting palce is fitting. Much of the history of five U.

R. Mathew Poteat: Reduced Spending Must Include the Military

[R. Mathew Poteat is an Assistant Professor of History in the VCCS.] The greatest threat to liberty is not economic bailouts, education departments or health reform. It's the armed power of the state. At least that's what the American founders believed. James Madison wrote: "... of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded." The Constitution (much of which written by Madison) is clear about limiting the concentration of power, an

John H. Haas: America's Experiment in Religious Liberty a Bold Venture

[John H. Haas is an associate professor of history at Bethel College. He lives in South Bend.] "While we are contending for our own liberty," wrote George Washington to one of his officers during the Revolution, "we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case, they are answerable." Washington was explaining why he was ordering

Ron Chernow: The Founding Fathers Versus the Tea Party

[Ron Chernow is the author of “Alexander Hamilton” and the forthcoming “Washington: A Life.”] LIKE many popular insurgencies in American history, the Tea Party movement has attempted to enlist the founding fathers as fervent adherents to its cause. The very name invokes those disguised patriots who clambered aboard ships in Boston Harbor in December 1773 and dumped chests of tea into the water rather than submit to the hated tea tax. At Tea Party rallies, marchers brandish flags emb

Ussama Makdisi: Anti-Islamic Resolution Undermines Secular Society

[Makdisi is a professor of history at Rice University and is the author of "Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001" (Public Affairs, New York).] Islamophobia has reached America. In Austin today, a resolution by members of the Texas State Board of Education to rectify "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias" in "past Texas Social Studies textbooks" is being put to a vote. The board determines Texas public school curr

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Is China Strong or Weak?

[Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and Editor of The Journal of Asian Studies. His most recent book is China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.] China’s government has been using unusually strong language of late to assert its sovereignty over disputed stretches of international waters near to its shores. This has led to a ratcheting up of tensions, in particular between China and the United States, with Secretary of

Niall Ferguson: Larry Summers' Brutal Brilliance

[Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, was published in November.] Larry was my boss when I first moved to Harvard, and indeed he really was pretty crucial in persuading me to mo

Victor Davis Hanson: A Nation of Peasants?

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited amount of good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft; they must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy, rather than admiration of success, reigns. In contrast, Western

Jonathan Zimmerman: Newt Gingrich is Right: Obama Shares Anticolonial Values—American Values

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”]By now, you’ve probably heard about Newt Gingrich’s weird comments last week linking President Obama’s worldview to “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior." But here’s somethin

Jonathan Zimmerman: Movement Harassed by the FBI

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.] So it turns out that Martin Luther King Jr.'s most trusted photographer was actually a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, passing along material about King and other civil r

Julian E. Zelizer: Treat Your Democrats Well

[Zelizer is a history professor at Princeton University. He is the author of Jimmy Carter (The American Presidents Series).] President Obama has looked to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson because of their ability to move big legislation through Congress. He has looked to Ronald Reagan because he was a transformative leader. He’s looked to Bill Clinton for help, because nobody plays the game of politics better. Unfortunately, however, as Obama leads his party into the 2010 midte