Roundup: Historians' Take

Stanley Kutler: Our ‘Dumb Wars’ Will Go On

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] “It is time to turn the page,” President Barack Obama said as he announced the “end” of combat operations in Iraq. Meanwhile, those who brought us that unnecessary war remain committed to such policies and, if returned to power, are likely to carry them out. Sadly, the president neither confronted nor repudiated his critics. They are shameless and unrepentant for designing the Iraq War, and they now call f

Olivia Miljanic and Robert Zaretsky: France and the Gypsies, Then and Now

[Olivia Miljanic is a lecturer at the University of Houston. Robert Zaretsky is professor of history at the Honors College, University of Houston, and with Alice Conklin and Sarah Fishman, author of “France and Its Empire Since 1870.”] Many commentators and activists have reacted with fury to the French government’s expulsion of hundreds of Roma, or Gypsies, to Bulgaria and Romania. Many critics liken these expulsions to the deportations of Jews organized by France’s Vichy regime du

Julian E. Zelizer: Bad Timing Could Sink Democrats

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Arsenal of Democracy" and a book on former President Carter and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, to be published this fall by Princeton University Press.] With the real possibility of a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, many Democrats are starting to argue for budget cuts. In New Hampshire,

Steve Hochstadt: Why I Will Keep Talking About Race

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier and is available and on his blog at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com.] Journal-Courier columnist Jay Jamison writes that everyone should “shut up about race.” But I won’t. I will keep talking about race because Jacksonville’s history is permeated by race. While slavery dominated the South, Jacksonville had a significant free black population

James McWilliams: Should We Really Pay $4 for a Peach?

[James McWilliams is an Associate Professor of history at Texas State University, San Marcos.] For a movement that's always been touchy about being labeled elitist, the food movement has been surprisingly outspoken lately about the virtues of expensive food. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Michael Pollan sang the praises of sustainable eggs that cost eight dollars a dozen and delectable peaches that go for $3.90 each. Such prices would seem less shocking, he assured readers

Daniel Pipes: Americans Wake Up to Islamism

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]The furor over the Islamic center, variously called the Ground Zero Mosque, Cordoba House, and Park51, has large implications for the future of Islam in the United States and perhaps beyond. The debate is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. One would have thought that the event to touch a nerve within the American body politic, making Is

Judith Stein: The Deficit Worth Worrying About

[Judith Stein is a professor of history at the Graduate Center and City College of the City University of New York, and the author of "Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies" (Yale University Press). She can be reached at judithstein@att.net.] It won't be a good Labor Day for America's jobless. August's employment report showed the economy was still losing jobs (54,000 of them in the mon

Matthew Dennis: Fear and Ignorance Fuel Opposition to New York Mosque

[Matthew Dennis (mjdennis@uoregon.edu) is a professor of history and environmental studies at the University of Oregon.] Late in 2001, the president and Congress designated Sept. 11 as Patriot Day, a discretionary day of remembrance for the nearly 3,000 people killed by terrorists in lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. It was a sincere but odd tribute, given that the victims were no more and no less patriotic than

Joseph A. Palermo: There's No Good News for Democrats Because There's No Good News

[Joseph A. Palermo is Associate Professor of American History at California State University, Sacramento.] "All politics are local," Tip O'Neill famously said, and the political smoke signals being sent up locally going into the 2010 midterms all point to systematic failure on the part of the governing party. Democratic constituencies have been forced to sit back while the politicians they elected are helpless in the face of an unprecedented attack on public institutions.

Michael Kazin: In TNR, the Working Class Has Disappeared

[Michael Kazin is co-editor of Dissent and a professor of history at Georgetown University. He is completing a history of the American left to be published in 2011 by Knopf.] Once upon a time, The New Republic ran detailed, empathetic articles about the lives, ideas, and activism of American workers. “They seem easygoing, good-humored and straightforward Southerners,” wrote Edmund Wilson in a 1931 essay about the coal-miners of West Virginia, “so much in the old tradition of America

Edward Tenner: Bloody-Minded Philosophers

[Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history.] Is the 1995 decision of the Department of Justice, the Washington Post, and the New York Times to publish the Unabomber Manifesto coming home to roost? Yes, it may have saved lives by prompting Theodore Kaczynski's brother to investigate similar quirks of style and identify him to the FBI as a possible suspect. But it also set a d

Allen C. Guelzo: The Rise of the Black Republican

[Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, and the author of "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President."] ...[A]s the economy loses steam, and President Obama's poll numbers sag, the ultimate humiliation in this summer of Democratic discontent is to find Republicans trumpeting 2010 as "The Year of the Black Republicans." This trend defies modern identity politics. In the 2008 election, 95 percent of black v

Jefferson Cowie: That ’70s Feeling

Jefferson Cowie, an associate professor of labor history at Cornell, is the author of “Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class.” TODAY we celebrate the American labor force, but this year’s working-class celebrity hero made his debut almost a month ago. Steven Slater, a flight attendant for JetBlue, ended his career by cursing at his passengers over the intercom and grabbing a couple of beers before sliding down the emergency-evacuation chute — and into popular history.The press immediately drew parallels between Mr. Slater’s outburst and two iconic moments of 1970s popular culture: Howard Beale’s “I’m mad as hell” rant from the 1976 film “Network” and Johnny Paycheck’s 1977 anthem of alienation, “Take This Job and Shove It.”But these are more than just parallels: those late ’70s events are part of the cultural foundation of our own time. Less expressions of rebellion than frustration, they mark the final days of a time when the working class actually mattered....

Victor Davis Hanson: The New Old World Order

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.] The post–Cold War New World Order is rapidly breaking apart. Nations are returning to the ancient passions, rivalries, and differences of past centuries. Take Europe. The decades-old vision of a united pan-continental Europe without borders is dissolving. The cradle-to-grave welfare dream proved too expensive for Europe’s shrinking and aging population. Cult

Jonathan Zimmerman: Anti-Islamic mood repeats history

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.] A little-known politician emerges from Illinois to capture the White House during a time of national turmoil and unrest. Critics whisper that he’s a secret member of a dangerous minority religion, which flouts the norms and traditions of democracy itself. Barack Obama, in 2010? No, Abraham Lincoln. In 1860. That’s right. Just as Obama’s enemies call him a closet Muslim, Lincoln’s opponents hinted

Andrew Bacevich: Obama Wants Us To Forget the Lessons of Iraq

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.] ...After seven-plus years, Operation Iraqi Freedom has concluded. Operation New Dawn, its name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid, now begins. (What ever happened to the practice of using terms like Torch or Overlord or Dragoon to describe military campaigns?) Although something like 50,000 U.S. troops remain in

Stanley Kutler: Our Enabling Media Is Worse Than Ever

[Stanley Kutler is the author The Wars of Watergate, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes, and The American Inquisition: Cold War Political Trials.] Thomas Jefferson periodically expressed support for a free press as essential to an “enlightened citizenry,” but when the reality of political life settled on him during his presidency and beyond, Jefferson had harsh words for it. The newspapers, he complained in 1803, “present only the caricatures of disaffected minds.” In his “retireme

Van Gosse: American Democracy (the Lack Thereof)

[Van Gosse is associate professor of history at Franklin & Marshall College and specializes in American political development, the African-American struggle for citizenship and American society in the Cold War era and since.] For more than two hundred years, the rest of the world has listened to Americans boast about our "freedom," our "liberty," and, most of all, how we are the model for a perfected democracy, which everyone else should emulate.

Julian E. Zelizer: Time for Obama to put cards on table

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of"Arsenal of Democracy" and a book on former President Carter and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, to be published this fall by Princeton University Press.] If current polls are a guide, the midterm elections probably won't be good for President Obama and his party. The Democrats are in danger of losing control of the House of Represe

John Sainsbury: Why the Aussies Can Debate the Monarchy But Canadians Can't

[John Sainsbury is a professor of history at Brock University.] The future of the monarchy came up as an issue in the Australian election. No surprise there. Australians have few inhibitions in discussing whether to retain the constitutional status quo or make the bold move to establish a republic.... Why could nothing like this happen in Canada? Why are our politicians so hesitant to engage with the issue of monarchy versus republic? Why, specifically, will there proba