Cliopatria: A Group Blog
Aaron Bady (∞); Chris Bray (∞); Brett Holman (∞); Jonathan Jarrett (∞); Robert KC Johnson (∞); Rachel Leow (∞); Ralph E. Luker (∞); Scott McLemee (∞); Claire B. Potter (∞); Jonathan T. Reynolds (∞)
At Chapati Mystery, our colleague, Manan Ahmed recommends Francis D. Cogliano's"Was the American Revolution Inevitable?" an arcticle done for the BBC. Cogliano is a senior lecturer in American history at the University of Edinburgh.
Over on the HNN mainpage, don't miss Jason Emerson's interview with Oxford University's Richard J. Carwardine about Abraham Lincoln.
At NewsMax.com, Jeremy Bradshaw backgrounds provocative observations about the American political scene by Paul Johnson, the conservative British historian: "George Bush Is The Next Thatcher".
At Rebunk, Tom Bruscino has a good, even-handed assessment of post-presidencies in American history.
Kirk at American Amnesia continues to raise important questions about reconstruction in Iraq. He notes that only two percent of the $18.4 billion approved for the effort has been spent there and wonders why it was left to a 22 year old University of Richmond senior to launch an effort to educate Iraqi college students about democracy and a 24 year old American was employed to create an Iraqi stock exchange.
After the Isaiah Berlin flap, you'd think that I'd have enough sense to keep my nose out of Margaret Soltan's University Diary, but n-o-o-o .... Really, she's got a very interesting post up with the argument that professors ought not be declaring their prejudices up front as a way of forewarning their students."It's not that professors should not have beliefs," she argues."It is that the sanctity of the classroom consists in large part in concealing them." Routinely informing students of one's beliefs, Soltan argues, is"narcissistic" and"stifling".
Finally, Jessica Cutler, the former aid to Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, has grabbed the attention of every blogger from Abu Aardvark to Daniel Drezner and Wonkette by turning tricks and a blog into a $300,000 advance for a book. We don't do tricks, but Cliopatria is a blog. Does that mean that we get a $150,000 advance? Make us an offer we can't refuse!
The basic thesis: that 2003-2004 may be remembered as the term in which William Rehnquist"lost" his Court, with O'Connor, Breyer, and Stevens emerging as the key justices--O'Connor and Breyer as the alliance of pragmatists, Stevens for his tactical successes.
On the Court's right, this week's New Republic has the latest, not terribly successful, attempt to imply that Clarence Thomas is anything more than a Scalia clone. I wonder sometimes what former Missouri senator John Danforth, who repeatedly stated in public and private during the confirmation hearings that Thomas would be a moderate justice, thinks of the performance of his protege.
Nonetheless, knowledge in the West of the existence of these churches in the East has a long tradition. In the high middle ages, it fed rumors of a mighty Christian potentate, Prester John, whose power threatened both Moslem caliphates and Persian sultanates. Reports of Prester John's kingdom sometimes located it in India or in Abyssinia on the horn of Africa. Such reports of a Christian kingdom in the East encouraged European voyages of exploration. In our own time, the Church of the East is of renewed interest because the largest body of Christians in Iraq are the Chaldean Christians. They speak Aramaic or Syriac and have not been in communion with the rest of Christendom for over 1500 years.
