Polls

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms?

by H Richard Uviller & William G. Merkel

There is, perhaps, a certain dullness in taking things at face value, in reading text as though the words meant what they said. We are, we suppose, conservative in our effort to understand the words of the Second Amendment according to their plain and literal meaning. We indulge in no flights of imagination. We do not, for example, argue that, since the militia of the 18th Century were composed of the people, the two words are synonymous and interchangeable so that the Second Am

Stalin and Saddam: Just What Was the Connection?

by Jamie Glazov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Yuri Yarim-Agaev, Mary Habeck, Jonathan Brent, Louis Menashe

Following is a symposium hosted by Jamie Glazov on frontpagemag.com. The 50th anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s death was marked on March 5, 2003. A month after the event, it remains, as always, still extremely relevant to discuss the meaning of the anniversary -- not only in terms of the malignancy that Stalinism represented in and of itself, but in light of the fact that the Iraqi war was triggered by a dictator who venerates Stalin. Indeed, Saddam Hussein has always

Steve Wants to Know

by Steve Howard

Talking about what they know is what most HNN writers do. Writer Steve Howard's specialty is asking questions about things he does not know. If you have an answer or a conjecture please join in the discussion below.WHY PEOPLE DON'T VOTE Decrying the lack of voter interest is a cottage industry. However, I have a question, or actually, a series of them. Do not the principles of advertising also underlie political campaigns?

HNN Debate: Was Ike Responsible for the Deaths of Hundreds of Thousands of German POW's? Pro and Con

In 1989 James Bacque published Other Losses, a shocking account of the treatment of German POW's at the end of World War II. Bacque claimed that Dwight Eisenhower, burning with hatred for Germans, allowed nearly a million POW's to die in camps of starvation and illness. Bacque's book sparked new research into World War II archives and attracted the attention of the media in Germany. In 1990 Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose convened a conference of scholars in New Or

Does the 14th Amendment Mandate Affirmative Action?

by Howard N. Meyer

As the civil war was ending, many Americans understood that it would not be enough merely to say"No" to slavery. The need for positive action was seen to be justified; negative action--rejecting slavery--would not be enough. The Fourteenth Amendment offered equality and justice. Along with the Amendment came several years of Freedman's Bureau legislation. To undergird freedom special benefits--land, crop aid, grants--were provided for the freed by the same Congress that drafted the A

Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors?

by Dave Johnson

HNN

Whose South Is It? Choose "A" or "B"

by Norman Ravitch Vs. Ralph Luker

The following exchange between Mr. Ravitch and Mr. Luker took place on Richard Jensen's Conservati

A Theory About Pyramids that Could Change the Way We Write the History of the New World and the Old

by Robert M. Schoch and Robert Aquinas McNally

When most of the academics trained in the study of the ancient world look at pyramids on different continents, they see proof of humankind's division into distinct

When People Fall for Conspiracy Theories: A Rumination

by Don B. Kates

People often emotionally reject the grim truth that tragedies can just happen. Many people can't face the reality that utterly reaso

The Spanish Holocaust and the Cover-Up that Lasted a Generation

by Robert Whealey

Most historians do not know that the Concentration Camp "Mauthausen," located in Austria, is to Spanish Republicans as "Auschwitz" is to Jews. Both names are red-flag words never to be forgotten. During the Seco

How LBJ Manipulated Events to Bring on War

by Daniel Ellsberg

August 4, 1964 was Daniel Ellsberg's first day on his new job at the Pentagon as an analyst. A courier came running in with a message. It was the news of the second attack in two days on the USS Madox, a destroyer operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Lyndon Johnson told the American people that the North Vietnamese -- the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam (DRV) -- had fired upon U.S. ships in an unprovoked and unequivocal attack in international w

German Phone Book

Reparations: The March on Washington

by David Horowitz

In 1943, A Phillip Randolph organized a civil rights march on Washington to demand full citizenship for black Americans. At the time, the descendants of slaves were disenfranchised and legally segregated in the South and legally discriminated against everywhere else. Twenty years later Martin Luther King Jr. led a triumphant reprise of Randolph's protest and delivered what has become second only to the Gettysburg Address as the most famous speech in American history. Within two years of King's m

Would Harry Truman Have Been Impeached If He Hadn't Dropped the Bomb?

by Philip Nobile

Counterfactual history, the great what-if game, has generally skipped over the massacres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What If Japan Won At Midway? What If D-Day Had Failed? What If the Berlin Blockade Went Hot? These are all plausible World War II scenarios. As such, each was fleshed out in Robert Cowley's 1998 anthology, What If? The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. But not"What If Truman Did Not Drop the Bomb?" How come this militar

Did J. Edgar Hoover Really Wear Dresses?

by Ronald Kessler

In 1993, Anthony Summers, in his book Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, claimed that Hoover did not pursue organized crime because the Mafia had blackmail material on him. In support of that, Summers quoted Susan L. Rosenstiel, a former wife of Lewis S. Rosenstiel, chairman of Schenley Industries Inc., as saying that in 1958, she was at a party at the Plaza Hotel where Hoover engaged in cross-dressing in front of her then-husband and Roy Cohn, former counse

Nixon and the Jews

by David Greenberg

Richard Nixon's reputation as a hateful, vindictive anti-Semite was reinforced late last month when the National Archives, which has been releasing the 3,700 hours of Nixon's tape-recorded White House conversations in installments since 1996, dropped another batch. Whenever new Nixon tapes are released, the next-day stories invariably highlight the most outrageous tidbits, which typically

USS Liberty: Eyewitness Account

by James Ennes

The sky was clear over the eastern Mediterranean when I assumed the forenoon watch as officer-of-the-deck on the bridge of the USS Liberty. The sea surface rippled slightly from a warm, seven-knot breeze as we headed south, sometimes as close as 13 miles from the Israeli and Egyptian coastlines, but always in uncontested international waters. This was June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the third great Arab-Israeli war, soon to be known as the Six Day War. From here it was h

USS Liberty: False Allegations of Anti-Semitism

by Yomin Postelnik

I am writing this piece, myself being a religious Jew (with rabbinical ordination) and one who is very troubled not only by Israel’s attack of an American ship but also by the cover-up that ensued and the false accusations hurled at those who only want the truth to be known. Survivors of the attack have been slandered as being anti-semitic when this is not at all the case. I have seen this slander repeated in many a book review or article dealing with the Liberty. Some slander has also co

USS Liberty: Historians Debate

by HNN Staff

Editor's Note: The publication of James Bamford's Body of Secrets has sparked a vigorous debate among historians concerning the attack on the USS Liberty. Following are excerpts from one recent debate conducted by the members of H Diplo, a listserv run by the University of Michigan under the general heading, H Net (Humanities Network).ERIC BERGERUDMr. Bergerud is a professor of history at Lincoln University in Oakland, California and the au

USS Liberty: Review of The History Channel Documentary

by Judith Klinghoffer

Editor's Note: The independent documentary,"Cover Up: Attack on the U.S.S. Liberty," was shown on The History Channel, August 8. The History Channel aired its documentary in the midst of the latest round of public debate on the fate of NSA ship USS Liberty, engendered by James Bamford’s new book, Body of Secrets. The facts are straightforward: On June 8, three days into the Six Day War, Israeli forces attacked the American spy ship. Israel immediately ass