The Latest 
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The Second Amendment has Never Covered Kenosha Shooter Kyle Rittenhouse
Noah Shusterman
If his lawyer wants to argue that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in the spirit of those eighteenth-century militias which went outside the law and defied their state government, and especially those who did so in the interest of promoting white supremacy – his case would be historically solid. It would not, however, be an exoneration.
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Breaking Lincoln's Promise
Shannon Bontrager
Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address demanded that Americans keep the memory of both the Union dead and their cause alive and "hot." The cooling of that memory has enabled backlashes against justice through history, and today.
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Woody Guthrie's Communism and "This Land Is Your Land"
Aaron J. Leonard
The author of a new book on the FBI's surveillance of folk musicians argues that Woody Guthrie did join the Communist Party, though he was at odds with leadership over discipline. The affiliation is reflected in the lyrics of his most famous song.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Helped Shape the Modern Era of Women’s Rights – Even Before She Went on the Supreme Court
Jonathan Entin
A former clerk recalls Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a pioneering legal strategist who laid the groundwork for significant legal challenges to sex discrimination.
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Historians Respond to the Death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The passing of the long-serving Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prompts reflection on her legacy as a lawyer and jurist, the future of the court, and the impact of a nomination fight on the election.
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Nostalgia and the Tragedy of Trump's Speech at Mount Rushmore
John Bodnar
Trump's July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore, like his attacks on historians this week, embodied an escapist nostalgia that purges injustice, conflict, and violence. Abraham Lincoln's brand of nostalgia is more worthy of embracing.
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Dwight Eisenhower Built up American Intelligence at a Crucial Moment
Steve Vogel
Dwight Eisenhower oversaw an aggressive building of American intelligence capability toward the USSR, moving espionage to a more prominent role in Cold War foreign policy. This included ordering the CIA to tunnel into East Berlin to tap Soviet phone lines.
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Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980
James Thornton Harris
Rick Perlstein's latest volume in his study of the rise of the conservative movement focuses on the coming of Reaganism, but sheds light on how we got Trump.
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Unlike the Germans We Have Failed to Recognize and Atone for Our Holocausts
Walter G. Moss
Reconciling America's racial divisions requires honest reckoning with the past, and teaching history as a search for the truth, not an effort to inclulcate patriotism, placate parents, or pander to censorious textbook commissions.
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Blog
The Religion of Patriotism
Steve Hochstadt
"Patriotic rituals were designed to indoctrinate young and old with the belief that the racist, sexist, antisemitic America of the 20th century was already perfect, that critic...
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Dirty Politics, Then and Now
George Herring
Political mudslinging by presidential surrogates is nothing new. But Trump digs in personally to his social media smears in a way that is unprecedented and degrading to the office and the nation.
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“We Are Ourselves”: Review of For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton
Eric Laursen
Maurice Brinton--the pseudonym of a British neurologist--authored an influential series of works of radical political thought that urged the British left to move away from rigid party structures and doctrinal disputes toward social movements.
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Is This the Most Important Election?
Donald J. Fraser
President Donald Trump may indeed be right, this is the most important election in our history. Just not for the reasons he believes.
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The Roundup Top Ten for September 18, 2020
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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The Pentagon is Missing the Big Picture on "Stars and Stripes"
Mark T. Hauser
The Pentagon's plan to scrap funding for the Stars and Stripes newspaper isn't just an attack on a historic military institution. It's ignoring the lessons the paper's history offers for efficient operation and integrating military operations with the economic life of the nation.
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Native Actors Outside the Frame
Liza Black
Liza Black's new book traces the lives of prominent and anonymous Native actors, examinng the way that Hollywood films exploited their labor and images while spinning narratives that justified the historical conquest of Native lands.
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The Garbage Troop: Segregation, Primatology, and Republican Rhetoric
Guy Lancaster
Donald Trump and his Republican Party are not afraid that Joe Biden’s election will destroy America. They’re afraid that it won’t.
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Twenty-One Days Later: Ventura County's Participation in the Chicano Moratorium of 1970
Frank P. Barajas
Police responded brutally to the 1970 Chicano Moratorium protest march in East Los Angeles, including killing journalist Ruben Salazar. This news spread to smaller Chicano communities in the state and beyond and sparked a politicial movement for justice that echoes today.
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The "Noble Dead": Warren Harding and the Resting Places of the WWI Fallen
James D. Robenalt
Just as Americans visit and revere the graves of those in Arlington and other national cemeteries in the United States, it is important to remember that the nation made a solemn compact with the families of those who were lost in the First World War.
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Richard Haass on the Need for Historically Informed Policy in a Changing World
David O'Connor
"A democracy requires that its citizens be informed, and it was evident far too many citizens in the United States and other countries could not be described as globally literate."
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Making History with Music
Jason Burt
PFC Richard Burt played the trumpet in a military band tasked with raising morale in the fight to retake the Philippines before a career as a music teacher. His grandson, a history teacher, wants to make him and his bandmates posthumous recording stars.
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Blog
A Conversation with Seattle Author Dr. Lawrence Matsuda on His Debut Historical Novel "My Name is Not Viola"
Robin Lindley
Dr. Lawrence Matsuda's debut historical novel traces the history of Japanese Americans in they years before, during and after World War II and examines the effects of discrimination and internm...
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How an American TV Mini-Series Helped the Germans Acknowledge the Holocaust
Robert Brent Toplin
An American television minseries overcame initial skepticism by German authorities to rouse public conscience about the Holocaust and the complicity of ordinary Germans with persecution and genocide. Americans hesitant toward "political" popular culture should consider its contributions to truth and reconciliation.
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Fried Ice Cream and Steak: A Personal History of Hong Kong
Ron Steinman
For a journalist on leave from Vietnam, a Hong Kong restaurant was a brief reprieve from the demands of war coverage and the tumult of rebellion in Hong Kong.
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Prop 16 and the "Chinese Virus" Bring Two Views of Asian American History into Conflict
Hao Zou
Many Chinese Americans oppose California's Proposition 16, which would reinstate race-based affirmative action in state university admissions. This support stems from a meritocratic interpretation of Chinese American experiences that is challenged by the xenophobic "Chinese Virus" discourse around COVID-19.
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Roundup Top Ten for September 11, 2020
The top opinion writing by historians and/or about history from around the web this week.
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Americans Have Feared Another Civil War Since the End of the Last One
Richard Kreitner
The ink was hardly dry on Lee's surrender at Appomattox before Andrew Johnson's conciliation toward the former Confederacy clashed with the unfulfilled goals of freed slaves and radical Republicans to threaten further violence. These fault lines have been hidden but never healed in the restored American union.
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The "Triple Nickles": Jim Crow Was an Elite Black Airborne Battalion's Toughest Foe
Robert F. Williams
The lesson of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion for African Americans is a sadly familiar one: proving oneself is not enough; becoming members of a select fraternity was not enough to earn the respect and equality that comes with full citizenship.
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Blog
Fabrication and Fraud in the Lost Cause: Historian Adam Domby Interviewed
Robin Lindley
"I had two articles that I wanted to write. One was all about white supremacy and memory and the other was about lies and memory. And then I looked at those projects and it eventually dawned o...
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The Headless Horseman: William Barr and the Attorney General in History (Part 2)
James D. Zirin
In the conclusion of his two-part analysis of William Barr's actions as Attorney General, former prosecutor James Zirin argues that Barr has hitched his office completely to the Trump Train.
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"Elvis In The Box": The National Enquirer Issue that Made Today's Celebrity Culture
Michael Nelson
As fans mourned Elvis at Graceland, the National Enquirer came to Memphis and got the coffin shot that sold 6.7 million copies.
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Trump Can Use MS-13 as a Prop Because the US Won't Acknowledge a Role in Creating It
Roberto Lovato
Roberto Lovato's new book "Unforgetting: " examines how policing in the United States, including a combined crackdown on immigration and gang activity led by William Barr after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, helped create MS-13 as a transnational criminal gang and a political symbol of fear to be exploited in election years.
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Can Biden Beat Van Buren's Curse?
Robert Schmuhl
In 1840, Democrat Martin Van Buren ran for re-election without a running mate, having never embraced the eccentric Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, the man chosen by Senate Democrats to serve as his Vice President. Beginning with Johnson's failed bid for the presidency in 1840, only two of sixteen Democratic Vice Presidents became President, and none came to office by election.
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The Latest Resurgence of Ethnic Studies
Elwood Watson
The history of ethnic studies as an academic movement is a cycle of rise and retrenchment; protest movements often push for more representative curricula, while forces of tradition and austerity seek to uphold a canon or push majors linked directly to the job market. Today's protest movements are pushing an ethnic studies renaissance despite the dire financial straits of many colleges and students.
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A Coup of "Clerqs"?: Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy" Reviewed
David O'Connor
Anne Applebaum's new book looks with concern at the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and the loyal party functionaries who enable its march.
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Will California Voters End a 24-Year Ban on Affirmative Action?
James Thornton Harris
Voters in November may reverse California's constitutional ban on affirmative action, which was passed by ballot measure in 1996. The state's electorate has changed considerably in a quarter century and passage seems likely.
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On Labor Day, Think of Bread and Roses
William Lambers
On Labor Day, remember the demands of striking textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Working people deserve more than bare subsistence; they're entitled to dignity and pleasure too.
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Blog
"Have You Lived Your Whole Life in Vermont? Well, Not Yet!": One State's Joke Culture
Jim Loewen
Not every state has a sufficiently particular identity to sustain a culture of jokes about its inhabitants and their relationship to outsiders. Vermont does.
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The Roundup Top Ten for September 4, 2020
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
News
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court’s Feminist Icon, Is Dead at 87
- How Jewish History and the Holocaust Fueled Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Quest for Justice
- Princeton Admitted Past Racism. Now It Is Under Investigation.
- How Jimi Hendrix’s London Years Changed Music
- Presidential Campaigns are Almost Always about the Future. In 2020, the Candidates Cannot Stop Talking about the Past
- 52 Years Ago, Thelonious Monk Played a High School. Now Everyone Can Hear It.
- From MLK to Whistleblowers, the FBI’s Trouble with Dissidents
- If the Electoral College is a Racist Relic, Why has it Endured? (podcast)
- It’s the 100th Anniversary of the Wall Street Bombing
- Ed Bearss, Past Chief Historian Of National Park Service, Dies At 97
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