Roundup: Historians' Take

Silvio Laccetti: Beyond the Poverty Threshold

Silvio Laccetti is a retired professor of history and social sciences at Stevens Institute of Technology. He can be reached at slaccett@stevens.edu.Big headlines greeted the recent release of new federal poverty statistics, fueling a vitriolic debate about wealth and poverty in America. The same ancient rhetoric is resurrected every election cycle, confusing the issue and further dividing the populace. To have a more meaningful discussion, we must keep in mind that poverty is relative.We can and do quantify poverty. Federal poverty lines are drawn based on yearly income: $10,890 for one person, $22,350 for a household of four. According to the latest figures, 15.7 percent of all Americans - some 46 million people - are poor. In Pennsylvania, the latest poverty rate stands at 13.4 percent, or some 1.6 million souls, with much higher rates in cities such as Philadelphia (26.7 percent), Allentown (27 percent), and Reading (41.3 percent, the highest among cities of more than 65,000 nationwide). All the numbers are up, but after three terrible years of economic recession, who is surprised?...

William Hogeland: “Occupy Wall Street,” Today’s Whiskey Rebellion

William Hogeland is the author of the narrative histories "Declaration" and "The Whiskey Rebellion" and a collection of essays, "Inventing American History." His blog is Hysteriography.

Ruth Rosen: American Pie: A Cautionary Tale About Three Sixth Grade Misfits

Ruth Rosen, Professor Emerita of History at U.C. Davis, is a former columnist for The Los Angeles Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Right-Wing Studies at U.C. Berkeley and the author, most recently, of The World Split: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, 2006.We were bad. Incorrigible, they said. We had curious minds, awkward bodies and awakening hearts. When we disrupted the class with our chattering and chaotic behavior, the teacher asked us to leave the room and stand in the hall until we behaved properly. On our report cards we received "unsatisfactory" for our social behavior.The year was 1957. Our teacher viewed us as difficult, inattentive, and troublesome, but no one ever suggested to our parents that we had a medical problem or learning disability that required medication.But that was then, when we were 11 years old and the great waves of hyperactivity/ADHD diagnoses and stimulant medications were still a thing of the future. Now we wonder what would happen if we were misfits in 2011. Would we be referred for medical diagnosis? Would we be among the nearly 10% of children currently treated with psychoactive drugs?...

Walter Russell Mead: Will Egypt Have A Revolution?

Walter Russell Mead is professor of foreign affairs and the humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest. The Arab Spring has reached its first autumn, and it is still not clear whether Egypt will have a revolution.  In my view, it hasn’t had one yet.  The Mubarak family attempted a revolution of its own early in the year, replacing the military-business regime that has ruled the country since the 1950s with a dynastic dictatorship.  The military beat that revolution back with the help of popular demonstrations; the Mubaraks are gone, but the military state at the core of Eygptian power since Nasser’s time lives on. The most recent demonstrations in Tahrir Square are trying to change that.  Both liberal and Islamic groups fear that the army will continue to rule by stuffing the parliament with cronies who have roots in the old regime.  Those fears seem well judged; that is presumably exactly what those who rule Egypt hope to accomplish. So far, what Turks would call the “deep state” of Egypt — the institutions and individuals who hold the real power, whatever that pretty constitution says — have be

Michael Kazin: What the Temperance Movement and the Anti-Abortion Movement Have in Common

Michael Kazin’s latest book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. He teaches history at Georgetown University and is co-editor of Dissent.The makers of historical documentaries seldom seek to challenge the received opinions of their audiences. Even the most talented filmmakers tend to exalt the already exalted and shovel dirt on the thankfully deceased. One can, one should be moved by a production like Freedom Riders, which PBS aired this summer on the fiftieth anniversary of that dramatic, violent episode in the civil rights saga. But Freedom Riders comforts more than it educates and fails to ask such tough questions as why the notion of black and white people sitting together in a bus station could ever have provoked such rage.

Max Boot: Yemen after Awlaki

Max Boot is a contributing editor to Opinion and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Martin Kramer: The Middle East Circa 2016

Martin Kramer is Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and President-designate of Shalem College (in formation). He is also the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.When I received the assignment for today, it reminded me of that 1999 book, Dow 36,000. At the time the authors wrote it, the Dow stood at 10,300, and the book became a bestseller. But today the Dow is only 20 percent higher than it was then—it’s only at 12,700. Last February, one of the co-authors wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why I Was Wrong About ‘Dow 36,000′.” “What happened?” he wrote. “The world changed.” Well, what a surprise.

Ruth Rosen: Tom Friedman Tries to Scapegoat Baby Boomers -- He Should Remember That We Helped Forge American Prosperity

Ruth Rosen, Professor Emerita of History at U.C. Davis, is a former columnist for The Los Angeles Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Right-Wing Studies at U.C. Berkeley and the author, most recently, of The World Split: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, 2006.Baby Boomers, who have now morphed into “young seniors,” certainly did not contribute to the economic decline of America.  On the contrary, this huge demographic bulge—as we have moved through our highly-publicized life cycle-- helped create the country’s consumerist prosperity with our teenage allowances and middle age purchases.Yet running through the debate on the national debt is the subterranean belief that “young seniors,” once known as Baby Boomers, are stealing from future generations by having too many hip replacements and using up too much medical care to stay healthy and active. 

Julian E. Zelizer: Should GOP Go for Inspiration or Victory?

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter," published by Times Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, published by Princeton University Press. With all the talk about the ideological and strategic divisions within the GOP, the real choice that primary voters will have to make next year is a simple one.Republicans have to decide whether to pick a candidate who appeals to their hearts or to their minds. The field is still fluid, but so far Texas Gov. Rick Perry appears to be the candidate who appeals most strongly to the ideological passion of conservatives, even though he stumbled in last week's debate.Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who doesn't inspire that passion seems to be the right man at the right time to defeat a struggling incumbent president. In recent weeks, at least based on the polls, logic seems to be a stronger pull.

Juan Cole: Visiting Liberty Square (Occupy Wall Street)

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).I spent the summer going to rallies and demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt, and was even in Barcelona during their protest.Tahrir Square, July 2011(Nighttime Protest at Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt, July 2011)

Walter Russell Mead: Report From The Middle East: Part One

Walter Russell Mead is professor of foreign affairs and the humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest.I’ve just come back from a week of teaching, lecturing and conversation in Israel and the West Bank, and nothing I saw there has led me to change my basic view of the situation.  Peace is not at hand in the Middle East because neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are really willing to accept the only kind of peace they can get.

Victor Davis Hanson: Postmodern Class Warfare

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom. © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.When President Obama’s approval rating hit 40 percent, he fumed at “billionaires and millionaires,” “fat-cat bankers,” and “corporate-jet owners.” In his sloppy targeting, Obama doesn’t care much that a billionaire has 1,000 times more than a millionaire — or that his new tax proposals will take a lot more from those making $200,000 than from the few making $1 million.

Conrad Black: Charles de Gaulle's Prescient Opposition to United Europe

Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, and, just released, A Matter of Principle. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com....Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille in 1890, to the family of a monarchist schoolteacher. De Gaulle was a Flaubertesque haut bourgeois, as well as an officer of the French army when it was rivaled only by the German army as the greatest in the world, and was unrivaled as the most storied army of all. He was imbued with the middle-class concept of the value of savings, frugality, pay-as-you-go. To him, greatness and security could never be bought or sustained on the installment plan. And mere politicians, whom he considered a lesser breed swimming in a sticky fondue of moral weakness and opportunism, could never be trusted to resist the temptation to pander, devalue, or seek short-term gain.

Tom Engelhardt: Sex and the Single Drone: The Latest in Guarding the Empire

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), will be published in November.

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Racial Crisis

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of the just-released The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

Niall Ferguson: You Were Expecting Statehood?

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. 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, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, was published in November. The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s bid for full U.N. membership was dead on arrival in New York. So why bother even raising the subject? The answer: to drum up international sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. Yet other defeated peoples have suffered far more than they.

Matthew Avery Sutton: Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics

Matthew Avery Sutton, an associate professor of history at Washington State University, is the author of “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America.”THE end is near — or so it seems to a segment of Christians aligned with the religious right. The global economic meltdown, numerous natural disasters and the threat of radical Islam have fueled a conviction among some evangelicals that these are the last days. While such beliefs might be dismissed as the rantings of a small but vocal minority, apocalyptic fears helped drive the antigovernment movements of the 1930s and ’40s and could help define the 2012 presidential campaign as well.Christian apocalypticism has a long and varied history. Its most prevalent modern incarnation took shape a century ago, among the vast network of preachers, evangelists, Bible-college professors and publishers who established the fundamentalist movement. Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals and independents, they shared a commitment to returning the Christian faith to its “fundamentals.”...

Jonathan Zimmerman: Fracking Needs U.S. Oversight

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.Advocates of the extraction process known as "fracking" say it's safe, yielding vast quantities of natural gas without polluting our land and water. So, they say, federal environmental regulators should back off.And that, my friends, is what philosophers call a non sequitur. Let's hope it's a nonstarter, too.Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, involves pumping chemical- and sand-laden water deep into the ground to break up rock formations and release gas. If it's as safe as its supporters say it is, they should welcome federal oversight. Their very resistance to scrutiny suggests it might not be so safe after all.Consider the FRAC Act, cosponsored by Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), which would allow the federal Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the chemicals gas drillers use. The bill has sparked outrage within the industry and the Republican Party, whose leaders seem to be trying to outdo each other in condemning the EPA.

Michael Kazin: Whatever Happened to the American Left?

Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown, a co-editor of Dissent and the author of “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.”SOMETIMES, attention should be paid to the absence of news. America’s economic miseries continue, with unemployment still high and home sales stagnant or dropping. The gap between the wealthiest Americans and their fellow citizens is wider than it has been since the 1920s.And yet, except for the demonstrations and energetic recall campaigns that roiled Wisconsin this year, unionists and other stern critics of corporate power and government cutbacks have failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession.Instead, the Tea Party rebellion — led by veteran conservative activists and bankrolled by billionaires — has compelled politicians from both parties to slash federal spending and defeat proposals to tax the rich and hold financiers accountable for their misdeeds. Partly as a consequence, Barack Obama’s tenure is starting to look less like the second coming of F.D.R. and more like a re-run of Jimmy Carter — although last week the president did sound a bit Rooseveltian when he proposed that millionaires should “pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare.”

Martin Kramer: Al Qaeda is dead! (Again!)

Martin Kramer is Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and President-designate of Shalem College (in formation). He is also the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.Fawaz Gerges, media-friendly academic, is out and about, telling us that Al Qaeda is over, it’s had its day, it’s history. Al Qaeda is “organizationally moribund.” Indeed, it “peaked with the 9/11 attacks.”