Recently Published

The Unintended Consequences of an Amendment to Ban Gay Marriage

by David E. Kyvig

Current vocal advocates of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage ought to consider the old Chinese adage, "Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it." A gay marriage amendment, if adopted, could produce unintended and fateful consequences for the U.S. Constitution. Some of the possible results are certain to prove distasteful to the proposal's supporters, not to mention damaging to confidence in our constitutional system.

The Easy Way to Avoid Power Blackouts this Summer

by Hal Hellman

Summer's heat brings with it, as it did last year, the threat of massive power outages. Everyone who's suffered through them knows the disruptions they cause. But blackouts are also on the minds of operators of power plants and electricity distribution networks as they get ready for peak demand. Lots of things can cause blackouts -- transformer failures, severe weather, human error and, of course, terrorism. But the power reliability story hinges on economic and t

The Philippines, Redux

by Michael D. Richards and Jeffrey E. Key

Let's stop looking to Vietnam in the 1960s for clues about what to do in Iraq. If the Bush administration wants a little help from history, it should instead examine U.S. policy in the Philippines in the first years of the twentieth century. In Vietnam, the United States supported the losing side in a civil war. In the Philippines, the United States supported the Filipino independence movement by toppling the colonial Spanish government. Then, however, it insta

What If Aaron Burr Had Missed?

by Thomas Fleming

Let's reel back 200 years to July 11, 1804. Colonel Aaron Burr, the vice president of the United States under the banner of what would soon be called the Democratic Party, is standing on a grassy ledge on the Palisades, opposite New York City, aiming a pistol at General Alexander Hamilton, leader of the Federalist Party, forerunner of today's Republicans. Hamilton has an identical pistol in his hand. Burr killed Hamilton with his first shot. W

Arabs in American History

by Juan Cole

The capture of Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, a Lebanese-American Marine, underlines the service given to the United States by Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. In the wake of September 11, it is especially important that the U.S. public constantly be reminded that Arab Americans are not aliens but a longstanding and essential thread in the great American tapestry. Lebanese began coming to the US in some numbers in the 1880s. That wave of immigration, which was greatly reduced from 1924, also

Why Muslim Countries Treat Women Differently

by Daniel Pipes

The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq touched such a nerve in the Muslim world that one analyst said that the rape pictures"would equal a nuclear explosion" if seen in Muslim countries. Such extreme reactions raise the delicate topic of sex in Muslim-Western relations. The West and the Muslim world entertain vastly different assumptions about female sexuality. (I draw here on the ideas of Fatima Mernissi in her 1975 book, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Mus

Why Barcelona Is One of the Most Inspiring Cities in the World

by Lawrence S. Wittner

In late June 2004, I returned to my home in Albany, New York from Barcelona, a city located in the Catalonian region of Spain and immortalized by George Orwell's powerful Homage to Catalonia. First published in 1938, the book recounts Orwell's searing perso

Clinton & Reagan: Thus Far They're Just Heroes to Their Own Parties

by David Greenberg

In the last month, Ronald Reagan's death and Bill Clinton's book tour have confirmed the two former presidents as political giants. Of course it's still too early to state with confidence how either man's historical reputation will shake out. (Indeed, the very notion that"history" will at some point render a final judgment is fallacious. As the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl said,"History is an argument without end.") But for now, they're the only two presidents to serve two full terms since Dwi

Why Blacks Used to Celebrate July 5th

by William Loren Katz

This Independence Day falls on July fifth, and if the significance of that date were better known, it would trigger a strong reaction in the United States, particularly among people of color. During the long night of slavery in the United States, free African Americans in the North discussed how to respond to a holiday that celebrated the independence of a country that held millions of their loved ones in chains. They came up with many creative solutions, some based on changing world events

We Aren't Close to Doing for Iraq What We Did in Japan

by Mark Selden

President George W. Bush has repeatedly presented the American occupation of Japan as the model for Iraq's democratization. Does the Japanese occupation really illuminate contemporary reconstructions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other contemporary war-torn societies? Certain similarities do stand out: as in Japan half a century earlier, the U.S. has proclaimed its intention to return "sovereignty" to a democratic Iraq while preserving a dominant American military presence. Yet beyond t

Why Americans Are Crazy About the 4th of July

by Walter A. McDougall

Last September a group of apprehensive students gathered for the first meeting of a seminar I was offering for the first time. They weren't sure they wanted to take the class. Indeed, they weren't even sure what it was about. Imagine, then, their discomfort when I dispensed with all introductory remarks and bade them sit still for 32 minutes while I played a videotape of the entire presidential inaugural ceremony from January 2001. "Forget whether you favored Al Gore or Geo

Sacco & Vanzetti: Were They Really Innocent?

by Richard Newby

Recently, the Atlantic Monthly Online published an article by Sanders Kleinfeld in praise of Felix Frankfurter's 1927 book on Sacco and Vanzetti. The magazine has chosen not to publish my response. Editors have that right. Cut off from discussion, I recall how the Atlantic's editor in 1927 introduced readers to Frankfurter's 24-page article on Sacco and Vanzetti in its March i

Iraq and Other Pseudo-States

by Adam Hochschild

Some fifteen years ago, while writing about apartheid-era South Africa, I visited one of its nominally independent black"homelands." This crazy quilt of territories was a control mechanism the white regime had come up with in a country where whites were vastly outnumbered by South Africans of other colors. For the most part rural slums, the homelands, also known as Bantustans, made up about 13% of the nation's land. I was driving across miles of veldt where blacks were trying to scratch a liv

The Middle East Studies Professors Who Came to the Defense of a Jew-Hater

by Daniel Pipes and Teri Blumenfeld

Fawaz Damra, the Palestinian-born leader of Ohio's largest mosque, was convicted recently of lying about his connections to terrorist organizations when he applied for U.S. citizenship. As a result he may be sentenced to up to five years imprisonment, fined $5,000, and face deportation. The high profile court case turned on videot

The NAACP's Rare Legal Victories in the North

by Adina Back

The 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education has come and gone. But in celebrating its achievements we have once again omitted an important chapter in this nation's flawed story of desegregation: the resistance since 1954 to integration by Northern public schools despite many challenges by parents and civil rights activists. The understandable tendency to wax nostalgic about the Brown ruling perpetuates a dangerous myth about race relations outs

Interview with Richard J. Carwardine: About Lincoln

by Jason Emerson

The following interview with Mr. Carwardine, winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize for Lincoln (Longman Publishing Group), was conducted by email. Mr. Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University. You recently b

The Downside of Downsizing

by Bob Batchelor

Have pity on “Ol’ Lonely,” he just got a whole lot lonelier. The star of countless television commercials -- known better as the Maytag repairman -- stands watch over a company that just announced that it is slashing 1,100 jobs, or about 20 percent of its workforce. According to company reports, Maytag hopes to speed decision-making and save costs by restructuring, typical corporate-speak under such circumstances. Maytag isn’t alone in using mass layoffs as an e

Column: What I Like About America (Letters from Japan, Part 10)

by William Thompson

This spring Mr. Thompson is a visiting professor at Osaka University of Commerce. This is the tenth of his"Letters from Japan." The car culture descended upon the entire American

Using Hitler to Score Points in Campaign 2004

From Newsweek (June 25, 2004): On Friday, Democrats and Republicans went to war over a new Bush reelection campaign ad that uses images of Adolph Hitler in bashing Democrat John Kerry. The Web video, e-mailed to 6 million Bush supporters Thursday evening, splices together clips of Al Gore, Howard Dean, Rep. Dick Gephardt, film director Michael Moore and Kerry. On two occasions in the 87-second-long “Webme

About the Ties Between Saddam and Osama

by White House Website, NYT, TalkingPointsMemo.com

The White HouseThe following news brief was sent out by the White House on June 18, 2004. 9/11 Commission Report Confirms Administration's Views of al-Qaeda/Iraq TiesA 9/11 Commission staff report supports the Bush Adminis