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In Defense of Transactional Presidents

by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Five presidents: Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. Taken in 1991.Many people assume that leaders with transformational objectives and an inspirational style are better or more ethical than leaders with more modest objectives and a transactional style. We tend to think of Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan as more impressive than Dwight Eisenhower or George H. W. Bush. Leadership theorists often dismiss transactional leaders as mere “managers.” But that is a mistake.

Whatever Happened to George W. Bush?

by Burton Kaufman

George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. Credit: Flickr/Cal Almonds.

Five Myths about Roe v. Wade

by Marc Stein

Supreme Court Building. Credit: Wiki Commons.Originally posted on the UNC Press Blog.On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, the abortion rights case that culminated in one of the most controversial legal rulings in the country’s history. Forty years later, numerous myths continue to circulate about the contents and meanings of Roe. Here are five of the most significant:Myth #1: Roe endorsed abortion on demand.

Will Presidential Term Limits Ever Be Abolished?

by Michael J. Korzi

FDR with Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, a few months before his death.

Secularization of America: Is the Latest Pew Poll Really a Big Deal?

by Brent Nongbri

Bible and rosary image via Shutterstock.

Reclaiming Compassionate Conservatism

by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Toynbee Hall, a self-sustaining London community spearheaded by the Salvation Army, in 1902. Credit: Wiki Commons.Defeat, like death, concentrates the mind wonderfully. It also liberates the mind. People venture to think the unthinkable, or at least, the impermissible. A new generation of conservatives may be moved to reconsider some ideas that have fallen into disuse or even disrepute. Compassion is one such idea. 

The Real Origin of America's Gun Culture

by Carole Emberton

Replica of a Colt 1851 Navy revolver. Credit: Wiki Commons."I'm here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!,” radio host Alex Jones warned British television journalist Piers Morgan on Monday. Leading the charge to have Morgan deported for voicing his opposition to America’s lax gun control laws, which many believe led to the shooting deaths of twenty children and six adults last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Jones attempted to cast Morgan as a modern-day Tory ready to reclaim the United States as Great Britain’s colonial possession. Although Morgan’s Britishness proved an effective prop to Jones’s revolutionary rhetoric, the current debate over gun control owes more to the Civil War Era than the American Revolution.

We're All [Ancient] Greeks Now When It Comes to Debt

by Thad A. Titze

The Parthenon from the south. Credit: Wiki Commons.Following the Peloponnesian War, Athens’ interim government borrowed 100 talents ($37 million) from the victorious Spartans. Shortly thereafter, when Athens’ democratic government returned to power, it assumed the debt incurred by the interim government and repaid the Spartans in full. This story is noteworthy as it marks one of the first discernable instances of sovereign debt. The Athenians’ timely repayment, however, is anomalous in the long history of public borrowing. Default and renegotiation of public debt is a practice nearly as old and constant as public debt itself. As the spotlight of sovereign debt returns to the Greek people -- pioneers of public debt -- it is important to recognize that throughout history governments have rarely been careful stewards of borrowed money.

Does Slavery Still Exist Today?

by Robert E. Wright

 Credit: Flickr/Inheritance magazine.

Why Ports Are the New Factories

by Louis Hyman

Crane at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, California. Credit: Wiki Commons.Last month, union activists across the country celebrated what they saw as the latest opportunity to kickstart the moribund labor movement: a strike at Walmart on Black Friday. Retail workers, or as Walmart calls them, "associates," across the country were to walk out on the greatest shopping day of the year. The walkout was to signal the national unity of retail workers and strike a blow that would stagger the giant from Bentonville. At the same time, it would galvanize liberal consumers who would support the walk-out by their refusal to shop. Bringing together consumers and workers, they believed, would force America's largest retailer to the negotiating table.It failed.Walkouts were erratic. Shoppers, most of whom were hard-pressed workers themselves, thought more about the presents under the tree than the picket lines, if there were any. It turns out, as one might expect, that coordinating a walkout at thousands of locations across the country was hard, even in this age of social media.

Channelling George Washington: Junking the Constitution

by Thomas Fleming

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff."Mr. Madison, call your office!""I beg your pardon?"I’m only half kidding. As if we didn’t have enough trouble holding the country together, a law professor at university located in our national capital recently published an article in a major newspaper, entitled 'Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.'" "Why does he think we should do that?""He quotes Tom Jefferson, who believed every constitution should expire after a single generation. The professor doesn’t seem to realize he’s succumbing to Tom’s wackiest idea, 'The Earth Belongs to the Living.' Tom picked it up in France, along with his consuming love for French radicals who killed tens of thousands of innocent people to purify their revolution.""What else did 'The Earth Belongs to the Living' include?"

Disarm the Filibuster

by Joyce Appleby

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Credit: Flickr/Talk Radio News Service. There's a chance that the U.S. Senate will return to some semblance of a functioning legislative body. A majority of senators could vote to eliminate Rule XXII, which authorizes the notorious filibuster. Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution, which gives to both houses of Congress the determination of "the rules of its proceedings," offers that opportunity on the first day of each new Congress. The filibuster, which requires a supermajority to cut off debate, entered the Senate's rules in 1807 as a courtesy to speakers. Since then, Rule XXII has metastasized into a procedural vise that threatens the democratic foundation of our government. The filibuster lost all semblance of being an aid to discussion in the middle of the nineteenth century, when some senators began using the rule to hold the floor for lengthy speeches to prevent voting on bills they didn't like.

Has a Tipping Point Finally Been Reached for Gun Control?

by Sheldon M. Stern

NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre in 2011. Credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore.

What About All the Thousands of Other Kids Killed with Guns?

by Susan J. Pearson and Blain Roberts

Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens, 1610-1612.The mass shootings in Newtown have affected us in a way that previous massacres in Aurora, Tucson, even Columbine, have not. Especially in the hours and days after the new broke, Americans responded in emotional, even visceral, terms. We spoke of aching hearts, sickened stomachs, and tightened throats.Why?Everyone knows the answer: because twenty of the victims were children."It's hard to believe that someone would kill children, innocent children," the grandmother of Charlotte Bacon, gunned down by Adam Lanza at age 6, told a CNN affiliate.

The Federal Government Should Hold On To General Motors

by Andrew M. Schocket

Most journalists, federal officials, and General Motors (GM) executives are celebrating the U.S. Treasury's recent announcement that the federal government is beginning to sell its share in the bailed-out auto giant.  They claim that the government's sell-off is good for GM and for the government, and it is the "American" thing to do.  But the success of both the GM bailout and the history of private/public partnerships in early American history suggest that they are wrong on all three counts.  The Treasury should hold onto GM stock as long as it can.

Lincoln, Spielberg, Sandburg, Kennedy, and Compromise

by Walter G. Moss

To say that Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is a “hot topic” among historians and politicians is an understatement. As of 22 December, The History News Network (HNN) had links to 23 articles on it. President Obama hosted a White House screening of it on 15 November. And on 19 December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell invited the entire Senate to a screening of it at which Spielberg and leading cast members also appeared.

Mandate Gunowners Purchase Firearms Liability Insurance

by Andrew Meyer

Credit: Wiki Commons.

Thomas Jefferson's Radical Plan to Avert the Fiscal Cliff

by Dennis Gaffney

Those looking for guidance on how to chisel the federal debt today might re-examine how Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican party tackled the issue. Jefferson, who fought personal debt all his days, made the erasure of the federal debt his number one priority after his first election in 1800. He believed debt siphoned money from taxpayers by forcing them to pay interest, giving more funds -- and hence, power -- to bankers, who Jefferson deeply distrusted. The choice for Americans, Jefferson believed, was between “economy and liberty” and “profusion and servitude.”Jefferson understood that debt was necessary to pay for war and to invest in the public good, but he believed that “neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself, assembled can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time....” That was a generation, according to Jefferson, and his debt reduction plan, devised by his Secretary of Treasury Albert Gallatin, was to eliminate the debt he inherited in sixteen years.

The Myth of the Skyscraper Index

by Jason Barr

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.“Does Skyscraper Boom Herald Economic Doom?” Yes, according to the Skyscraper Index. In the words of its creator, Andrew Lawrence research director at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the Index shows that “an unhealthy correlation exists between the building of world’s next tallest building and an impending financial crisis.” But is this true?

Does Jesse Helms Deserve to Have a Courthouse Named After Him?

by Jonathan Riehl

Should this building be named for this man? Credit: Flickr/Wiki Commons/HNN staff.Last week, North Carolina Congresswoman Renee Elmers introduced a bill to rename a historic federal building in Raleigh in honor of longtime Senator Jesse Helms.The liberal advocacy group Progress NC was among those first into the fray against the “Jesse Helms Federal Building,” launching an online petition drive against the re-naming. It has close to 7,000 signatures and is growing fast. The story is attracting news coverage from across the country.I received a copy of the petition in an email from a group of progressive North Carolina university scholars with whom I share many interests. Though it might shock some of my liberal and progressive colleagues, I’m not sure I’m going to sign that petition.Why not? It’s not because I would have cast my ballot for Jesse Helms if I were voting in North Carolina forty years ago.