Roundup: Historians' Take

Julian Zelizer: AIG bonuses follow an American tradition

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.] ... Traditionally, American politicians in times of crisis have resisted aggressive interventions by government into business which would tamper with managerial

Joyce Appleby: Obama needs some FDR magic

[Joyce Appleby is professor emeritus of history at UCLA and the co-director of the History News Service.] President Obama's $3.55-trillion budget tackles the nation's highest priorities while promising to cut deficits in the long run. Breathtakingly bold and refreshingly honest, the budget speaks louder than words about Obama's confident leadership. But, alas, it only makes more acute the dilemma he faces. Last month, House Republicans voted unanimously against his stimulus plan,

Richard Reeves: Hail to the Chief — in Public, That Is

President Obama must have been a bit surprised when, on his 54th day in office, the former vice president, Richard Cheney, decided to go on television and brand him a danger to the Republic. “ “He is,” said Cheney, “making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” That is not the way the game is usually played. Even former President George W. Bush understood that. Speaking two days after Cheney to an audience of 2,000 peo

Jean Strouse: When the Economy Really Did ‘Fall Off a Cliff’

[Jean Strouse is the author of “Morgan: American Financier” and the director of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library.] IN what may come to be the definitive line about our current economic crisis, Warren Buffett said on the CNBC program “Squawk Box” this month that the United States economy has “fallen off a cliff.” The most trusted investor in history went on the air to talk, with characteristic candor and humor, about the horrendo

David Greenberg: The Folly of the 'Hundred Days'

[David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, is the author of "Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image."] So great were the hopes for the launch of John F. Kennedy's presidency that even before his inauguration, the president-elect was griping about the pressure he felt to work magic. "I'm sick and tired of reading how we're planning another 'hundred days' of miracles," Kennedy complained to his chief aide, Ted Sorensen, as th

Tom Engelhardt: Economic Dirty Bomb Goes Off in New York

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.] A block from my apartment, on a still lar

Michael Kazin: A Short History of American Rage

[Michael Kazin’s most recent book is A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. He teaches history at Georgetown University.] A specter is haunting the Obama administration, Congress, and just about every big bank in the land—the specter of populism. Not many Americans grasp how “credit default swaps” and “collateralized debt obligations” helped push the country into a deep recession, but they do know that the wise guys and gals who set up such arcana got obscenely rich and w

Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills: There Is No Congo ... Why the only way to help Congo is to stop pretending it exists

[Jeffrey Herbst is provost of Miami University in Ohio. Greg Mills directs the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation.] The international community needs to recognize a simple, albeit brutal fact: The Democratic Republic of the Congo does not exist. All of the peacekeeping missions, special envoys, interagency processes, and diplomatic initiatives that are predicated on the Congo myth -- the notion that one sovereign power is present in this vast country -- are doomed to fail. It

James Kurth: What are We Fighting For? Western Civilization, American Identity, and U.S. Foreign Policy

[James Kurth is Professor of Political Science and Senior Research Associate at Swarthmore College and an FPRI Senior Fellow.] Fifteen years ago, Samuel P. Huntington published, first as an article (“The Real Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993) and then as a book (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon and Schuster, 1996), his famous argument about the clash of civilizations. The clash that he was referring to was the clash between the We

Tom Palaima: In education, enthusiasm matters

[Palaima (tpalaima@sbcglobal.net) is a professor of classics at the University of Texas.] During the economic crisis of the 1930s, two prominent institutions of higher learning introduced programs of study designed to prepare students for lives in a grim world. Neither institution used pre-professional courses, accountability measures, standardized testing or statistics about student earning outcomes. The University of Chicago introduced i

Julian Zelizer: Attacking the rich but not capitalism

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security — From World War II to the War on Terrorism,” will be published this fall by Basic Books.] This week, President Barack Obama found himself in a difficult position. At the same time that the president has been trying to build support for his financial bailout program, the media reported that American In

Jonathan Zimmerman: The true threat to teenagers lies in shutting out the real world. That's for losers.

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.] Imagine a drug that made American teenagers think and talk even more about the timeless concerns of adolescence: who's cool, who's cute, and who's going out with whom. Then imagine that millions of teens were taking this drug every day. Actually, you don't have to. The drug already exists, and it's called MySpace. There's a competitor drug, too, known as Facebook. Between one-half an

Julian Zelizer: GOP's "small government" talk is hollow

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.] As the budget debate heats up, Republicans are warning of socialism in the White House and claiming that Democrats are rushing back to their dangerous tonic of

Darius Rejali: The long and sadistic history behind the CIA's torture techniques

[Darius Rejali is a professor of political science and the author of Torture and Democracy, the winner of the 2007 Human Rights Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association.] In the 20th century, there were two main traditions of clean torture—the kind that doesn't leave marks, as modern torturers prefer. The first is French modern, a combination of water- and electro-torture. The second is Anglo-Saxon modern, a classic list of sleep deprivation, positional and rest

Julian Zelizer: The importance of money in creating the modern conservative movement

It takes money to build a political movement. But progressive Democrats are not always comfortable with this reality. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama's campaign was able to raise massive amounts of cash -- funds that proved pivotal to fending off the Republican attacks in the final month of the race. Democrats have been more willing to boast about their huge data base of small donors upon whom Obama relied. Using computer and telephone technology, as well as a mo

Mark Naison: Is "Schwartze" A Racial Slur? Reflections on Jackie Mason's Comedy and Yiddish Vernacular Speech

Jackie Mason is in trouble again . The folksy comedian, ,whose conservative politics are as in your face as his humor ( he now claims "white people in America no longer have freedom of speech "), says, after being criticized for calling President Obama a "schwartze" in a stand up comedy routine, that the word "schwartze" is merely a Yiddish slang expression for blacks, not a racial slur. Although I am a little younger than Jackie Mason, like him, I grew up in a fa

Juan Cole: Dick Cheney should be put on trial for war crimes

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Dick Cheney:"I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do....

Martin E. Marty: Blame God for the crisis?

Virtually every church newsletter, denominational website, religious periodical, or other medium, disseminated in print or electronically, makes some reference to the economic situation in which all classes of Americans find themselves today. Local congregations' offers of spiritual sustenance, community-sharing burdens, and hopes are still among the main and best things they do, as well as providing counseling, tips, and sometimes guidance to non-church organizations and experts who may be of h

Alan Wolfe: Obama vs. Marx

[Alan Wolfe is a contributing editor at The New Republic.] The world "liberal" was first used in its modern political sense in 1812, when Spaniards wrote a new constitution liberating themselves from monarchical rule. As it happens, the word "socialism" originated in roughly the same period; it came into existence to describe the utopian ideas of the British reformer Robert Owen. Such timing suggests two possibilities: Either the fates of liberalism and socialism

Juan Cole: Charles Freeman and the Coming War on Iran

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Bob Dreyfuss has a postmortem on the scuttling by the Israel lobbies of the Chas Freeman appointment to the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. Dreyfuss shows that well-known figures in the Israel lobbies openly