Roundup: Talking About History

Claire Berlinski: Closed Minds: A Response to Ron Radosh, Et Al

[Claire Berlinski, a contributing editor of City Journal, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.] In the latest issue of City Journal, I published a story about a large cache of Soviet-era documents smuggled out of Russia by Pavel Stroilov, a Russian researcher now exiled in London, and a similar collection of smuggled documents held by the former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. I wrote that t

Paul Kennedy: Do Leaders Make History, or Is It Beyond Their Control?

[Paul Kennedy is a professor of history and director of International Security Studies at Yale University and author of “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”] Some 70 years ago, on the evening of May 10, 1940, a controversial British politician entered Buckingham Palace for an audience with King George VI. The king asked him to become prime minister and to form a government. The politician then left to carry out his new job. His name was Winston Churchill. To this d

Kathryn Jean Lopez: The Mixed Legacy of the "Pill"

[Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com.] If you need a quick primer on the birds and the bees, on how a culture has been misled, and on why Carrie and her friends from yet another Sex and the City movie have had miserable, not-so-pretty lives, the woman once declared “Most Desired Woman” by Playboy can help you out. The actress has written a book, R

Cynthia Dagnal-Myron: Why I'm Not Surprised by Arizona's Racism

[Cynthia Dagnal-Myron has a blog on openSalon.] As someone who's lived in Arizona for over 20 years now, I'm not shocked by the recent immigration law. Partly that's because I know how common profiling is here on the border. It's not controversial in these parts; it's just how it is. It's a practice as old as, well, Geronimo. But I'm also not shocked to see the supposed resurgence of racism in America -- aimed, many feel, at Hispanics rather than African-Americans. Many

Claire Berlinski: Why Doesn't Anyone Care About Unread Soviet Archives?

[Claire Berlinski, a contributing editor of City Journal, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.] In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism l

Eugene Robinson: In Arizona, Just Say No to Latino Heritage

[Eugene Robinson writes a column for the Washington Post.] At least we don't have to pretend anymore. Arizona's passing of that mean-spirited immigration law wasn't about high-minded principle or the need to maintain public order. Apparently, it was all about putting Latinos in their place. It's hard to reach any other conclusion given the state's latest swipe at Latinos. On Tuesday, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a measure making it illegal for any course in the public schools

Linda Chavez: American History, Not Ethnic Studies

[Linda Chavez is chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics] Most ethnic studies programs in public schools are at best a waste of taxpayer money, and at worst racially and ethnically divisive indoctrination. But the goal shouldn't be just getting rid of these programs, which a controversial new bill passed by the Arizona legislature attempts to do, but ensuring that public schools give a

John Podhoretz: Life in New York, Then and Now

[John Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary.] I live in a small city in the midst of a great city. It is the same one in which I grew up four decades ago, and its buildings and landmarks and topography are almost entirely unchanged. Usually the small cities in America that never change are the ones whose best days came half a century or more ago and are now literally rotting away before your eyes, their once-handsome houses mottling, their fences akimbo, their storefronts boarded, t

Anthony Giddens: Brown, Blair, and Labour's legacy in Britain

[Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics, was the intellectual guru behind New Labour’s “Third Way” that brought Tony Blair to power.] The era of Labour hegemony is over. How should we assess its legacy? It is conventional these days to disparage the record of Labour in government over the past 13 years. Even quite supportive observers tend to argue that little of substance has been achieved. For the more swingeing critics, Labour in power –

Julia Ioffe: An Awkward Celebration in Moscow

[Julia Ioffe is a writer living in Moscow.] On Victory Day in Moscow, the city government closed off the main thoroughfares of the city and marched tanks and artillery through the streets. Nearly a million Russians packed in to see the old T-34s and the impossibly massive Iskander missiles trundle past. MiGs and helicopter gunships roared overhead. It was sunny, it was hot; people were happy, orderly. They waved Russian flags and cheered and whistled. The soldiers in the tanks waved

Richard Cohen: The Banality of Love

[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the Washington Post.] Around 1924, the professor seduced his student. He was 35 and married; she was 18 and single. He was an important philosopher, and she was a precocious kid, destined for great things herself. He was to become a Nazi and she was a Jew -- Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. If you could understand them both, as a couple and individually, you would understand the world and all its mysteries. You might also never sleep again.

Andrew Romano: Even Reagan Wasn’t a Reagan Republican

[Andrew Romano writes for Newsweek.] In the year and a half since Barack Obama was elected president, Republicans nationwide seem to have given up on the whole governing thing and chosen instead to play a long, rancorous game of "I'm More Conservative Than You Are." They've been playing it in Utah, where incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett—lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 84—lost a primary battle this past weekend. They've been playing it in Florida, where moderate Gov.

Clayton E. Cramer: Slavery Reparations: A Dead Issue, and Well-Deserved

[Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer and historian. His sixth book, Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie (Nelson Current, 2006), is available in bookstores. His web site is www.claytoncramer.com.]When whites say that slavery reparations is a dead issue, that’s not news. When conservative blacks say it, it isn’t news. But when Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says it, you can put a fork in it.In a remarkably co

Thomas Sherlock: Stalin's Ghost

[Thomas Sherlock is a professor of political science at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.] Over the objections of many Russians, posters bearing Stalin’s image were approved by Moscow’s city government for display during celebrations marking Victory Day in Russia on Sunday. The issue was debated in the weeks leading up to the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, and, in the end, the anti-Stalinists won. Only a few such posters were on display, and they were

Malcolm Potts: The Pill — A Modern Philosopher's Stone

[Malcolm Potts, a British obstetrician, is a UC Berkeley professor and has published extensively on contraception.] Medieval alchemists, and more recently Harry Potter, spent time seeking the Philosopher's Stone. It was thought to be the elixir of life, bestowing long life and perhaps even immortality. Fifty years ago this month, a genuine philosopher's stone was discovered — only it was a small, white, circular tablet called Enovid, the first oral contraceptive. I knew

Tom Huntington: Tinkering With History: Historic Aircraft, Winged Survivors

[Tom Huntington is the Senior Editor of American Heritage Magazine.] ...Two schools of thought exist as to the proper means of restoring an aircraft. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which preserves perhaps the world’s most impressive collection of historic aircraft, “does not restore its aircraft to flying status, because the steps required to make a plane airworthy often eradicate much of its value as an artifact,” says Malcolm Collu

Bruce Walker: Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat

[Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his recently published The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.] Seventy years ago, on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He had been warning the world about the dangers of Nazism for almost a decade. He had been warning the world about the dangers of Bolshevism since 1918. By the time Churchill became Prime Minister, the British had seen

Michael Winship: Kent State and the Frisbee Revolution

[Michael Winship is senior writer of PBS' Bill Moyers Journal. Watch online or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.] I was a freshman at Georgetown University when it happened, 40 years ago on May 4. Most of us didn't know what had taken place until late in the day. We were in class or studying for finals, so hours went by until my friends and I heard the news. On that warm spring Monday, the Ohio National Guard had opened fire on

Si Liberman: Remembering V-E Day

[Si Liberman is a retired editor of the Asbury Park (N.J.) Sunday Press.] The explosion of joy had not yet erupted. But there, in the heart of London that night, darkness was strangely absent on one city street. A stream of light illuminated almost an entire city block. Some happy soul had raised a store window's blackout shade. And for the first time in nearly six years, it was done without fear of inviting an air raid warden's citation or German bombs. Th

Nick Serpe: Hannah Arendt's Enduring Legacy

[Nick Serpe is an editorial assistant at Dissent.]In a rather peripheral passage in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt described how Central and Western European Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries gained access to high society and culture: To live in the aura of fame was more important than to become famous; thus they became outstanding reviewers, critics, collectors, and organizers of what was famous. The ‘radiant power’ [of fame