Roundup: Historians' Take

Michael Lind: Behind the Red State-Blue State Divide

Michael Lind’s new book, "Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States", will be published in April and can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com. ...Given the importance of geography in our politics, you’d expect political reporters and other commentators to be explaining why different regions vote in different ways. Unfortunately, you can watch many successive 24-hour cycles of political news coverage without getting any adequate analysis of political regionalism.It’s not that America’s political commentators lack interest in demographic factors that influence politics. On the contrary, they are obsessed with a small number of demographic characteristics, chiefly race and sex. Viewers or readers are told endlessly about the gender gap and racial/ethnic differences in voting. But you would fall asleep waiting in vain for a political reporter on TV to explain differences between the Highland South and the coastal South or to describe the distinctive political culture of the states in the Midwest settled by New Englanders.

Niall Ferguson: The British Prime Minister Is Coming to America

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, has just been published by Penguin Press. Reading David Cameron’s biography prepares you for a character out of Downton Abbey. His paternal grandmother was a direct descendant of King William IV, so technically he is a fifth cousin of the queen. His maternal grandfather was a baronet. His father’s ancestral home is Blairmore House in Aberdeenshire. He was educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was a member of the notoriously toffee-nosed Bullingdon Club. His father-in-law is another baronet. Yet when you actually meet Cameron he’s anything but a throwback to the Edwardian era. Disarmingly free of snobbery, he is Dave to his inner circle, hates wearing a suit and tie, and is as happy watching 30 Rock as Downton Abbey on TV.

Kenneth Lipartito: How the Depression Made Keynesians of Capitalists

Kenneth Lipartito is a professor of history at Florida International University. His co-written history of corporate social responsibility will be published in 2012. The opinions expressed are his own.Re-elected with 61 percent of the vote in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told his supporters, "Now I'm going back to do what they call balance the budget." True to his word, he cut spending and promptly sent the nation into a recession -- a sharper decline than in 1929.

Andrei Lankov: Let North Korea Keep Its Nukes

Andrei Lankov is a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and the author of several books on North Korea....The United States' official stance is unwavering: Its stated goal is the complete, irreversible, and verifiable nuclear disarmament of the North. This position has not changed over the past 20-odd years. In the meantime, the North has successfully tested plutonium devices, conducted a number of long-range missile launches (admittedly not so successful), and started an impressive uranium-enrichment program. We have never been as far from denuclearization as we are today.This shouldn't be surprising: U.S. policy is hopelessly unrealistic. Under no circumstances will the North Korean government consider relinquishing its hard-won nuclear capabilities. And why should it?

Asher Kaufman: Stop Beating the Drums of War against Iran

Asher Kaufman is associate professor of history and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is the author of "Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity in Lebanon."(CNN) -- President Barack Obama's rebuke of Republicans who are "beating the drums of war" in encouraging the United States to take military action against Iran should be targeted not just toward those critics but also, and more important, toward the Israeli government.An attack on Iran would not only fail to achieve its stated goal of denuclearizing the country, it would unleash a devastating confrontation between Iran and Israel that would harm thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and affect those in neighboring states.

Peter Baldwin: Europe's Long Road To Economic Ruin

Peter Baldwin is a professor of history at UCLA.The economic crisis in Europe reached its latest crescendo last night, as Greece managed, through furious last-minute negotiations, to convince its creditors to give it some more breathing room. But if the Greeks have managed to stake off ruin for a few more minutes, nothing has essentially changed in their situation: Their economy is still in shambles.The burning question on most observers' minds, and rightfully so, is whether the Greeks will ever manage to pay back their debts. But at this stage, it's also worth considering how we ended up on the precipice of such catastrophe at all. Here are some reflections on the long road to our present disaster — and the possible paths out of it.The economies of Europe are vastly divergent. The EU is much more variegated than commonly realized. It spans enormous economic disparities — great enough to cause problems for its functioning as a monetary union....

Harold James: History Blinds Europe to a Germany Worth Emulating

Harold James, a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University, is the author, most recently, of “The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle.” The opinions expressed are his own.A familiar specter is haunting Europe: How to live with a powerful Germany that seems to act according to its own interests, and whose policies are driven by domestic politics.Headlines across Europe are stoking old fantasies and fears. Yet, this time, the appropriate answer to that question is surprising, even shocking. The best way to deal with a resurgent Germany is for its partners and neighbors to imitate the institutional features, including monetary and fiscal stability, that have made that country so successful and powerful.That will require overcoming a long history of troubled relations. The so-called German problem dominated European and world affairs from 1871 -- when the German Empire was proclaimed by Otto von Bismarck in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles -- until 1945, when the Nazi regime was defeated....

Julian Zelizer: What Would a Second Obama Term Bring?

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" (Times Books) and of the new book "Governing America" (Princeton University Press).(CNN) -- Republicans warn that if President Barack Obama wins a second term, he will push forward with an expansive domestic liberal agenda that makes his existing record look like child's play. During the victory speech that followed the Michigan primary, Mitt Romney warned that "a second term Obama would be unrestrained by the demands of re-election."If you didn't like health care and financial regulation, the Republicans are saying, then you really won't like what happens when things turn leftward after 2012. No longer forced to think about independent voters and suburban moderates, Obama will allow his true liberal values to shine, the theory goes.

Michael Kazin: Why ‘Crony Capitalism’ is as American as Apple Pie

Michael Kazin’s most recent book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. He teaches history at Georgetown University and is co-editor of Dissent.Conservatives are supposed to cherish tradition, to draw on customs and policies which worked well in the past to guide what office-holders ought to do in the future. So it is ironic, if not hypocritical, that they constantly peddle a notion about the separation of business and government that has no basis in American history. “The voters,” asserted Mitt Romney, after his victory in the Washington caucuses, “want a conservative businessman who understands the private sector and knows how to get the federal government out of the way, so that the economy can once again grow vigorously.”In fact, the Republican nominee-to-be is distorting a long and bipartisan tradition of government support for big business in America. Conservatives now object to “crony capitalism,” but for much of U.S. history, businessmen have been hungry for it. Since the early nineteenth century, the government has helped fuel economic growth and corporate profit-making, and savvy businessmen and, recently, businesswomen have lobbied hard to keep those benefits coming....

Ronald Radosh: Netanyahu Vs. the Shadow of Annihilation

Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute.There were a few surprises at Monday night’s AIPAC meeting. Throughout the previous two days, AIPAC spokesmen regularly championed the bi-partisan nature of Congress’s resolve to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but by the end of the evening the differences in their approach and resolve were apparent, and so were the sympathies of the more than 13,000 attendees.First up was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He laid out the many ways in which Iran has acted as a dangerous and terrorist rogue state, and noted that while the Obama administration may share the common goal of stopping Iran from going nuclear, they had not come close to achieving success.It was the failure of Obama’s diplomacy from the beginning of his term that had forced Congress to act and would do so again.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Gaseous Policies of Barack Obama

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.“They” Did It (Again)!There are no “oil men” in the White House. So the Obamites cannot, as in the past, blame Halliburton, BP, or Exxon for rigging gas prices out of the Oval Office. Which leads to the question: why then are prices now climbing when the Bush-oil company connection is no longer the narrative? The new answer? “Wall Street” (e.g., the fat-cat bankers, corporate jet owners, those who don’t know when not to profit, etc.) raised prices.

Walter Russell Mead: America is Stuck with the Mideast

Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College. His blog, Via Meadia, appears at the American Interest Online. The Middle East is on fire. As waves of populist, ethnic and religious unrest sweep the region, long-established regimes totter like ninepins, violent conflicts explode in once-quiet countries, and all the rules seem up for grabs. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is on life support and Iran is marching steadily toward obtaining a nuclear weapon. And even as President Obama assures us that he has Israel's back and "will not countenance" Iran getting a nuclear weapon, as he did this week, his administration speaks about "leading from behind" and of a "pivot toward Asia." Many observers see all this as reflecting a sharp decline in American power. But the reality is more complicated and less dramatic. The reality is that the United States remains the paramount power in the region and will remain committed to it for a long time to come...

Geoffrey Kabaservice: Why Won’t the GOP Stick Up For Dwight Eisenhower?

Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.With its 80-foot-high smokestack columns towering over a four-acre site whose only representation of its subject would be a statue showing him as a barefoot boy, the current design for the proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial in Washington, D.C. manages to be both bombastic and silly. It’s easy to imagine tourists mistaking the memorial as a spectacularly misconceived tribute to Huckleberry Finn.Which is why it’s entirely appropriate that a dispute has broken out over it....But one group has thus far been conspicuously absent in the fight: Eisenhower’s own political party, the GOP. Indeed, Republicans’ silence on the matter of Eisenhower’s legacy says volumes about how far the party has come since his day. Rather than claim ownership over his legacy, they have abandoned it entirely, to the detriment of their party and their country....

Amalia D. Kessler: Stuck in Arbitration

Amalia D. Kessler, a professor of law and legal history at Stanford University, is working on a book on the 19th-century origins of American adversarial legal culture.YOU buy a cellphone, computer or car. You sign up for a credit card or open a retirement account. You apply for a job.In all these circumstances, you’re told that you must agree to dozens of terms and conditions, set forth in technical verbiage and tiny print. Eager to complete your purchase — or desperate to be hired — you ultimately sign without reading.If you’re lucky, nothing goes wrong. But a growing number of consumers and job seekers discover, when something does go wrong, that they have unknowingly agreed to waive their right to file a lawsuit. Instead, they must submit to arbitration....It wasn’t always this way.Until the early 20th century, American courts often refused to enforce agreements to arbitrate, insisting that parties ought to have their day in court. This began to change with the 1925 enactment of the Federal Arbitration Act, which established that agreements to arbitrate were enforceable like any other contract.

Michael Lind: What If All Sides are Wrong about Taxes?

Michael Lind’s new book, "Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States", will be published in April and can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com....To the extent that the radicals of the right (a better term than conservatives) admit the need for taxation, they tend to favor replacing all other taxes, including income and Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, with a federal flat tax on consumption. There is a case to be made for a national consumption tax like a value-added tax or VAT (more on this below) but as one among several taxes, not as a replacement for all other kinds of taxes.

Geoffrey Kabaservice: Why Mitt Romney’s Whole Career Is Making His Father Roll Over in His Grave

Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.When Bill Clinton suggested last week that Mitt Romney’s position on the auto bailout must have caused his father, former Michigan Governor George Romney, to be “turning over in his grave,” he was being deliberately provocative. But he was also being too kind.After all, it’s not just Mitt’s stance on auto manufacturing that would have caused his father grief. He has repeatedly cited his father as his greatest personal and political influence, and his principal motivation in seeking the presidency, as best anyone can determine, is to avenge his father’s failed 1968 attempt; yet the irony of Mitt’s campaign is that, despite his heartfelt loyalty to George’s memory, he seems to lack any real understanding of, or sympathy for, his father’s principles.SQUINT A LITTLE and Mitt looks a lot like his father, with the same lantern jaw, large forehead, and dark upswept hair graying at the temples. Mitt also resembles Romney père in his devout Mormon faith and business success before entering politics. And both Romneys acquired a reputation as pragmatic Republican governors, George in Michigan, and Mitt in Massachusetts.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Rush Limbaugh 'Slut' Comment Reveals a Double Standard on Sex

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is writing a history of sex education around the world.In 1968, the prominent anthropologist Ashley Montagu published a brief article in praise of a revolutionary new technology: the birth control pill. “In its effects I believe that the pill ranks in importance with the discovery of fire,” Mr. Montagu wrote.The pill would emancipate women to make their own sexual decisions, Montagu predicted; at the same time, it would eliminate the “exploitative attitude toward the female” among American men.He was half-right. Although the soon-to-be-capitalized “Pill” gave women new freedoms, it also threatened a longtime male privilege: the sexual double standard. And traditional men weren’t going to let that go without a fight.

James C. Cobb: Taking an Ideological Ax to U.S. History

James C. Cobb, the Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia, is the author of “The South and America Since World War II” and blogs at www.cobbloviate.com.In the 43 years I have taught U.S. history in universities and public schools, I have done my best to resist the temptation to turn my lectern into a “bully pulpit” for proselytizing my personal political gospel. Not surprisingly, I also get my back up when others, with no particular preparation in the field but a truckload of ideological axes to grind, attempt to prescribe both the content of historical curricula and the lessons that are to be drawn from them.A textbook example of such an effort to control the textbooks is Senate Bill 426, introduced by Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, and others and now under subcommittee review. “The Teach Freedom Act” seeks to “modify requirements for instruction” in U.S. history and other related social studies disciplines. In keeping with the spirit of a similar initiative launched with tea party backing in Tennessee, this legislation is premised on the belief that “a positive understanding of American history and government is essential to good citizenship.”

Victor Davis Hanson: History Never Quite Ends ... Whatever Else Changes, Human Nature Does Not

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the just-released The End of Sparta.The European Union and the United Nations, as well as globalization and advanced technology, were supposed to trump age-old cultural, geographical, and national differences and bring people together.But for all the high-tech veneer of the 21st century, the world still looks very much as it did during the previous hundred years and well before that...In response to all this depressing predictability, technocratic elites still dream up international solutions. The League of Nations was a noble idea that proved to be an irrelevant hothouse. No one still believes the pretentious United Nations is much more than a collective debating society. The non-democratic European Union is going the way of the megalomaniac and failed dreams of Charlemagne, Napoleon, and Hitler of one united European continent, one system, one ideology.What, then, are we left with? Only the humility of knowing that human nature does not change much....

Max Boot: Afghans Don't Hate America

Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present, due out next January.Violent Afghan protests over the burning of Qurans have strengthened the hand of those in Washington who argue for a faster reduction of U.S. troops. Especially galling was an incident of violence within Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, in which a disaffected driver shot and killed two American advisers. Many Americans seem to be saying that if the Afghan people don't want us there, why should we stay? That's dubious logic because we are not in Afghanistan as a favor to the Afghan people. We are there to protect our own self-interest in not having their territory once again become a haven for al Qaeda. It's also a fallacy to assume that most Afghans are anti-American. The protests, which tapered off Tuesday, have involved a few thousand people out of a population of 30 million. The attacks on Americans have been carried out by a handful of assailants. President Hamid Karzai has accepted President Obama's apology over the Quran-burning incident, condemned the violence and called for restraint. His security forces have policed the protests and suffered heavier casualties than our own...