Roundup: Talking About History

Source: The National Interest
9-2-08

Amy Zegart: The Legend of a Democracy Promoter

[Amy Zegart is an associate professor at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs. She is also a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, as well as a fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations.] IT’S LEGACY time. As the Bush administration winds down, the race is on to shape how future generations will view the past eight years. The president himself seems keenly aware of the clock, declaring his intention to grab that most elusive brass ring, peace in

Source: Gay City News
7-24-08

Doug Ireland: Turns out Norman Thomas's Socialist Party Came Close to Breaking the Gay Taboo in 1952

[Doug Ireland, who served as the media critic of the Village Voice for 7 years, can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at http://direland.typepad.com .] Recovering our hidden gay history has been a critically important byproduct of the modern gay movement, and in its current Summer 2008 issue, the 46-year-old independent socialist review New Politics has published a significant discovery that restores to us a lost moment of our political

Source: Spectator
8-22-08

Peter Hoskin: Learning the lessons of history

[Peter Hoskin writes for the Spectator.] I popped along to the History Channel debate '50 Things You Need to Know About British History' last night. 'Twas an excellent event - more than capably chaired by Iain Dale, and with an engaging panel consisting of Diane Abbot, Douglas Murray, Dominic Sandbrook and Polly Toynbee. The catalyst for discussion was the list I've included at the bottom of this post, and which will form the basis of a forthcoming TV series. But things swiftly mo

Source: NYT op ed page
9-4-08

Recollections from Republicans on past conventions and vice-president selection process

Dan in Real Life By Craig Fuller And the Party Blinked By Bay Buchanan Reagan's Midnight Ride By Edwin J. Meese III The Quiet Man By Victoria Clarke

Source: Accuracy in Academia
8-1-08

Malcolm A. Kline: Cold War Amnesia

The Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union is still being fought, not by unrepentant, unreconstructed anti-communists but by campus leftists born too late to be communist collaborators."In last month's undergraduate elections, a cadre of demagogues, in a disgusting publicity stunt, projected the image of a hammer and sickle onto one of Stanford's most venerable landmarks: Hoover Tower," Jason Dunkel, the business manager of the Stanford Review writes in a June 2008 fundra

Source: Newsweek
9-8-08

David Ansen: Ronald Reagan made forgettable films, but Hollywood prepped him for the political stage

As Marc Eliot points out in his biography "Reagan: The Hollywood Years," the actor who became president gave short shrift to his Hollywood career in both his memoirs—and when he did mention it, he wasn't always upfront with the facts. Major biographies about Reagan similarly have averted their gaze from his 54 films, most of them forgotten B-movies he made under contract at Warner Bros. Eliot's book intends to be a corrective. "To fully understand Reagan the man," he writes,

Source: MERIA
9-1-08

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez: New evidence of the USSR involvement in the Six Day War

[Dr. Isabella Ginor came to Israel from the USSR in 1967. She was a specialist on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs for Haaretz and other media, and a research fellow of the Hebrew University's Truman Institute. Gideon Remez, a historian by training, was a journalist with Israel Radio for almost 40 years, most of them as head of the Foreign News Desk.]Abstract: The authors continue their analysis of Soviet involvement in the 1967 War with a discussion of new evidence and a response to critici

Source: LAT
9-3-08

Allan J. Lichtman: How will Cheney go down in history?

[Allan J. Lichtman is a history professor at American University in Washington. His most recent books are "The Keys to the White House" and "White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement."] Since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the vice presidency has not been a purely ceremonial position (ironically, it was FDR's vice president, John Nance Garner, who said that the office "wasn't worth a warm bucket of spit"). Garner was im

Source: Telegraph
8-22-08

Christopher Howse: Do Claudia Jones and Marie Stopes deserve the stamp of distinction?

Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1st Class) and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (48p) were certainly distinguished. So, in her way, was dear old Barbara Castle, celebrated on the 81p stamp for "equal pay". But who do we have on the 72p stamp? Claudia Jones – a Communist and, almost as bad, a journalist, becoming "negro affairs" editor of the Daily Worker. Her devotion to international socialism makes her life read like an invention of the late Michael Wharton. She lived for

Source: NYT Magazine
8-31-08

Peter Baker: Bush's role in history

... George Bush does not want anyone feeling bad for him. Hates the idea, in fact. Why should anyone feel bad for him? He knew what he was getting into, and he is doing what he thinks is right. But as he enters the twilight of his presidency, he finds it both a liberating and a deeply frustrating time. With the war in Iraq finally going better, the dark cloud that dominated the White House for the past few years has lifted. The overnight reports Bush finds on his Oval Office desk ea

Source: Independent
9-1-08

Rupert Cornwell: Have we misunderestimated George W Bush?

[Rupert Cornwell has written articles published in The Independent.] History can throw up some improbable villains. Take, for example, Bud Selig. It can be argued that America's, and the world's, woes would now be less had Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, in 1992 appointed George Bush, then the managing partner of the Texas Rangers franchise, to the vacant post of commissioner of baseball. But Selig, at the time acting commissioner, took the job himself. Bush, in

Source: American Interest
8-1-08

John Lewis Gaddis: How history might regard Bush

... Presidential revisionism tends to begin with small surprises. How, for instance, could a Missouri politician like Truman who never went to college get along so well with a Yale-educated dandy like Acheson? How could Eisenhower, who spoke so poorly, write so well? How could Reagan, the prototypical hawk, want to abolish nuclear weapons? Answering such questions caused historians to challenge conventional wisdom about these Presidents, revealing the extent to which stereotypes had misled their

Source: WSJ
8-29-08

Frank Gannon: Finally getting to know Nixon

[Mr. Gannon was a special assistant to President Nixon and the chief editorial assistant for "RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon" (1978).] On Aug. 8, 1974, the night Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Henry Kissinger assured him that history would judge him to be one of America's great presidents. "That depends, Henry," Nixon replied, "on who writes the history." Rick Perlstein, the author of the recent "Nixonland" -- an 896-pag

Source: NYT
8-28-08

George McGovern: How he picked his veep

When I arrived in Miami on the Sunday before the Democratic convention in 1972, I had yet to select a running mate. I had already asked Ed Muskie, the senator from Maine, and Hubert Humphrey, the 1968 nominee and my longtime friend, if they would be on the ticket with me. Each had said no. So at the convention, I met with my staff in my hotel room on Thursday, the day after I was nominated. We had until 4 p.m. to find a vice-presidential nominee. My first pick that morn

Source: Standpoint
8-28-08

Allan Massie: France Finally Forgets Vichy

[Allan Massie is a journalist.] The Fifth French Republic, the creation of General de Gaulle, is 50 years old. Of the many regimes since the Revolution of 1789 only the Third Republic (1871–1940) enjoyed a longer life. Nicolas Sarkozy is its sixth President, only four years older than the Republic itself, the first of its leaders to be free of the divisive wartime memories and the crisis that led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and gave birth to the Fifth. This freedom repres

Source: Nixon Blog
8-26-08

Robert Nedelkoff: Why are the Dems so silent about LBJ?

[Robert Nedelkoff, a resident of Silver Spring, MD, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville and his Juris Doctor degree from Monterey College of Law in 1996. Since 1997, he has worked on behalf of the Richard Nixon Foundation at the National Archives in College Park, MD.] Tomorrow night, an African-American will receive the presidential nomination of one of America’s two major parties, for the first time in this nation’s history.It will be th

Source: Japan Focus (This excerpt is from a long article entitled: "Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial: Renovating War Memory in Nanjing and Tokyo." Click here for pictures.
8-22-08

Jeff Kingston: Renovating War Memory in Nanjing and Tokyo

[Jeff Kingston is Director of Asian Studies, Temple University (Japan Campus) and a Japan Focus associate. He wrote and photographed this article for Japan Focus. He is the author of “Burma’s Despair, Critical Asian Studies, 40:1 (March 2008), 3-43, several recent articles on East Timor and Japan’s Quiet Transformation: Social Change and Civil Society in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2004).] On a scorching July 7, 2008, officers of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces visited Nanjing for

Source: The Cutting Edge
8-25-08

Martin Gilbert: What Tolkien Taught Me about the Battle of the Somme

[Martin Gilbert’s book: “The Somme: the Heroism and Horror of War” is published in paperback by Holt, and is also available through his website: www.martingilbert.com.] J.R.R. Tolkien and the Somme were inextricably linked. I learned this forty-four years ago, shortly after I was elected to my first university appointment, at Merton College, Oxford. I was twenty-six years old.In those days there was a strict seating order at college dinne

Source: TomDispatch.com
8-24-08

Chalmers Johnson: The Past Destroyed ... Five Years Later (Re: Destruction of Iraq's history)

On April 11, 12, 13, and 14, 2003, the United States Army and United States Marine Corps disgraced themselves and the country they represent in Baghdad, Iraq's capital city. Having invaded Iraq and accepted the status of a military occupying power, they sat in their tanks and Humvees, watching as unarmed civilians looted the Iraqi National Museum and burned down the Iraqi National Library and Archives as well as the Library of Korans of the Ministry of Religious Endowments. Their behavior was in

Source: Japan Times
8-24-08

Roger Pulvers: 'Nation of copycats' maligns Japan's fine science and technology

One of the most commonly discussed issues of national character in Japan revolves around the question of personal creativity. Put simply, it is this: Are the Japanese lacking in the DNA of originality? This is an old, and tired, polemic, but I want to revisit it today to throw some light on Japanese achievements in science and technology. The image of Japan as "a nation of copycats" was conjured up in the early Meiji Era (1868-1912). After more than two centur