Roundup: Talking About History

David Kennedy: Why U.S. Leaders Never Questioned the Idea of Dropping the Bomb

by David Kennedy

David Kennedy, in Time (7- 25-05): [Kennedy teaches history at Stanford University and is working on a book about the American national character.] His left hand resting on an inexpensive Gideon Bible, Harry S Truman took the presidential oath of office on April 12, 1945. It was an extra 13 days before he received his first substantial briefing on the U.S. effort to develop an atomic

William Fowler: Massachusetts Should Apologize for the Arcadian Expulsion

William Fowler, in the Boston Globe (7-23-05):[William Fowler is director of the Massachusetts Historical Society.] IT IS TIME for Massachusetts to recognize a great wrong. Two hundred and fifty years ago this summer, Massachusetts helped launch a brutal campaign of ''ethnic cleansing" against the Acadians of modern day New Brunswick

Burke Vs. Horowitz: Does the Left Hate America?

Editor's Note: David Horowitz, the editor and founder of the conservative website, FrontPageMagazine.com, invited historian Timothy Burke to review Mr. Horowitz's recent book, Unholy Alliance. Mr. Horowitz published the review and his response; both are reprinted below. (Click here for Mr. Horowitz's response.) In an email to HNN Mr. Horowitz expressed his dissatisfaction with the review and offered a reward :

Alan Dershowitz: A Children's Book Celebrates Chomsky and Zinn?

Alan Dershowitz, at frontpagemag.com (7-21-05): “Give me a child for the first seven years and you may do what you like with him afterwards.” This cynical defense of the brainwashing of children has been attributed variously to Stalin, Lenin and several religions and cults. Robert Shetterly, the author of a new book for young adolescents, apparently believes that propaganda is just as effective with impressionable boys and girls in their early teens. His se

Lee Kaplan: Bias at a Community College Against Israel

Lee Kaplan, at frontpagemag.com (7-21-05): At the end of last year a friend contacted me who was taking a course titled “Politics of the Middle East” at Diablo Valley College, a small community college located in northern California. My friend knew I frequently write about academic matters, particularly concerning anti-Israel and anti-U.S. indoctrination on US college campuses. And he asked me to

Daniel Pipes: The Apology He Got from an Islamic Group that Claimed He Approved of Hitler

Daniel Pipes, in the NY Sun (7-19-05):[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.]Something possibly unprecedented has occurred in the battle with radical Islam. A leading Islamist organization has retracted its slurs against me and issu

Thomas Woods: The Flat Earth Libel Against Religion

Thomas Woods, at lewrockwell.com (7-13-05):In the course of promoting my new book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, I have made the point that major historians of science today no longer hold the simplistic position th

Alvaro Vargas Llosa: The Selling of Che Guevara

Alvaro Vargas Llosa, in the New Republic (7-11-05):Che Guevara, who did so much (or was it so little?) to destroy capitalism, is now a quintessential capitalist brand. His likeness adorns mugs, hoodies, lighters, key chains, wallets, baseball caps, toques, bandannas, tank tops, club shirts, couture bags, denim jeans, herbal tea, and of course those omnipresent T-shirts with the photograph, taken by Alberto Korda, of the socialist heartthrob in his beret during

Alan Dershowitz: New Challenge to Columbia and to Chomsky, Finkelstein, and Cockburn

Alan Dershowitz, at frontpagemag.com (7-13-05): [Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His latest book is The Case For Peace (Wiley Aug 2005).] Remember Professor Rashid Khalidi? He is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and director of its Middle East Institute. He is a big part of Columbia’s anti-Israel problem, having infamously said, among other hateful utterances, that “the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend” to “American Likudn

Richard Cohen: On Celebrating Dictators Like Mao

Richard Cohen, in the WSJ (7-13-05): Thumbing through a decorating magazine recently, I came across a bedroom nicely appointed with, among other things, two silk screens by Andy Warhol. One was of flowers and the other was of Mao Zedong, the Chinese dictator who died in 1976 and has since been proclaimed the No. 1 mass murderer of modern times. As a decorating touch, Mao is about a

Christopher Hitchens: Would Thomas Jefferson Have Opposed the Iraq War?

Christopher Hitchens, in the WSJ (7-12-05): [Mr. Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America" (HarperCollins, 2005).]All through the years 2003 and 2004 one used to hear it: "So, you think your Iraqi friends are about to adopt Jeffersonian democracy . . ." (pause for hilarious nudge, sneer, snigger or wink). Aft

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: The New Book that Shows that America Has Always Had to Straddle Religious Divisions

E.J. Dionne, in the Washington Post, in the course of a review of Noah Feldman's America's Church-State Problem -- And What We Should Do About It (7-10-05): ... In his brisk, balanced history of America's debates about God's public role, Feldman pokes one hole after another in the assumptions of activists on all sides of today's religious wars. Contemporary religious conservat

Alexander O. Boulton: What's Disturbing About the Reaction to Sen. Dick Durbin's Comments

Alexander O. Boulton, in a communication to HNN (7-8-05): [Alexander O. Boulton, Associate Professor History, Villa Julie College.]As a college professor who has taught World and U.S. History for over a dozen years, I am glad to see so many historical references in the news lately. Most of this recent attention to history is the result of Senator Richard Durbin’s remarks suggesting that American treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo might be compared to acts perfor

James Taranto: Has Roe Helped Reduce the Number of Democratic Voters?

James Taranto, in the WSJ (7-6-06):Roe v. Wade is a study in unanticipated consequences. By establishing a constitutional right to abortion, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court no doubt thought they were settling the issue for good, accelerating a process of liberalization that was already under way in 1973. But instead of consensus, the result was polarization. The issue of abortion soon after, and for the

Gary B. Nash: Who Shall Write the History of the American Revolution?

This article was the subject of a Cliopatria SymposiumGary Nash, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (7-1-05) (subscribers only): "Who shall write the history of the American Revolution? Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it?" Thus wrote John Adams in 1815 to Thomas Jefferson. "Nobody," Jefferson replied fro

Bill Witherup: Richland, WA ... Where They Made the Plutonium Used in The Bomb

Bill Witherup, at the website of Japan Focus (June 2005): [Bill Witherup is a poet living in Seattle who writes on labor, nuclear issues, and prisons. His latest book is Down Wind, Down River: New and Selected Poems (West End Press, 2000). A longer version of this essay appears in the July 2005 issue of Political Affairs. Posted at Japan Focus on June 30, 2005.] July 16, 2005, will be the sixtieth anniversary of the plutonium-fueled atomic bomb, tested at Wh

Gary Younge: Why the Story of Racism in the South Doesn't End with the Jailing of Edgar Ray KIllen

Gary Younge, in the Naton (7-11-05):For Buford Posey, a white man raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Second World War had a civilizing influence."When I was coming up in Mississippi I never knew it was against the law to kill a black man," he says."I learned that when I went in the Army. I was 17 years old. When they told me, I thought they were joking." For several decades Posey's as

Clint O’Connor: Why Does Hollywood Ignore the American Revolution?

Clint O’Connor, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (7-3-05): It’s a pitch no Hollywood studio could refuse: “A ragtag gang of revolutionaries takes on the greatest empire the world has ever known – and wins!” It’s backed by those five turnstile-turning words: “based on a true story.” It has everything producers want: violence, epic scope, great characters and instant name-reco

Marc Leepson: The Biography of the Flag

Marc Leepson, in Newsweek (7-3-05):[Marc Leepson is the author of the recently published"Flag: An American Biography."]On July 4 Americans will fly Old Glory from our front porches to our Porsches and pickup trucks. We will wear star-spangled images on our T-shirts, baseball caps, headbands, earrings and boxer shorts. No country in the world matches the intensity of the American citizenry's attachment to its national flag. So it's more tha

Louise Mirrer, James Oliver Horton and Richard Rabinowitz: Happy July 5th!

Louise Mirrer, James Oliver Horton and Richard Rabinowitz, in the NYT (7-3-05): [Louise Mirrer, James Oliver Horton and Richard Rabinowitz are working on a forthcoming exhibition about slavery at the New-York Historical Society.]STANDING before a gathering of the Ladies' Antislavery Society in Rochester, Frederick Douglass, newspaper editor and internationally known