History
November 23, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It is just me, or did the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy pass yesterday with much less commemoration than usual? You’d think an anniversary of this sorry day ending in a zero would have merited special closing segments on the evening network news (NBC Evening News chose instead to run a closing puff piece on a Napa Valley winery), covers or special commemorative editions of the
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November 23, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Paul A. Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship and is one of the country’s most distinguished scholars of history and politics. His personal site is here. In view of his study of Republics Ancient and Modern, Professor Rahe is the academy’s foremost authority on the history of republics. Although his subsequent work
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November 22, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Minnesota, the North Star State, has long had a state seal and flag that depict a pioneer and an Indian, along with other elements appropriate to the state and its history: The Minnesota flag is simply the seal on a plain background. The seal and flag have come under attack as “racist,” on the ground that the Indian is riding away, having been chased out by settlers. As Bill Walsh
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November 22, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
“The Kennedys may well be the most photographed, written about, talked about, admired, hated, and controversial family in American history. But for all the words and pictures, the real story was not told until Peter Collier and David Horowitz spent years researching archives and interviewing both family members and hundreds of people close to the Kennedys,” reads the Encounter Books profile of The Kennedys: An American Drama, first published in
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November 21, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
As Steve notes, the New York Times has finally gone after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., member of a family that has been “ersatz American royalty” for 60 years. The great Paul Johnson, who died at 94 back in January, had some thoughts on the Kennedys in A History of the American People, published in 1998. Patriarch Joe Kennedy, appointed by Franklin Roosevelt to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, was
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November 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Ferdinand Magellan was one of the world’s greatest explorers. He led the first expedition to sail around the world, although he didn’t finish the voyage, having been murdered by natives in what is now the Philippines. Magellan’s greatness as an explorer and navigator has been recognized in many ways. For example, he discovered the Strait of Magellan at the bottom of South America. And his expedition observed and recorded the
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November 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current is “Don’t know much about Middle Eastern history” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line.
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October 18, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
Last month, the Canadian Parliament hailed the Ukrainian Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of the Nazis’ Waffen-SS Galicia Division, as a “Canadian hero.” It soon emerged that the late Peter Savaryn, chancellor of the University of Alberta, had fought in the same unit as Hunka. This should not have been a surprise. As “60 Minutes” explained in 1997, after World War II Canada welcomed thousands of Nazis into Canada, including war
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October 9, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
Waldheimer’s Disease made the late United Nations boss forget he was a Nazi. The Waldheimer’s Variant spreads willful ignorance of National Socialism, and it can compel Canadian parliamentarians to hail Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of the Nazis’ Waffen-SS Galicia Division, as a “Canadian hero.” Fortunately, there is a vaccine for this malaise: historical truth. As the great Malcolm Muggeridge explained, German National Socialism and Russian Communism were Teutonic and Slavonic
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October 7, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo is blazing a wide trail of destruction through critical race theory and wokism these days, but along the way he produced the 10-minute video below making the case that President Nixon was the first significant political figure to grasp the essence of the modern administrative state along with the determination to fight it. Alas, despite some early successes, Nixon’s larger plans were undone by the
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September 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Jews begin the observance of Yom Kippur at sundown tonight with the Kol Nidre prayer service. Ten years ago our friend Rachel Paulose asked to join us at our service. Since then she has regularly attended the service with us and join my family when we break our fast, although we are out of town this year. Next year in the Twin Cities! The first time around at services with
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September 15, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Our cultural betters are always on the lookout for signs of white supremacy and its key cognate—toxic masculinity. And the latest thing that has caught the worried eye of the culturati is an apparent fascination, supposedly expressed by Very Online Males, with ancient Rome. The odd twist of this story is that women in increasing numbers are apparently asking men in online relationship platforms how often they think about the
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September 11, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I first wrote about Rick Rescorla in 2003 after finishing James Stewart’s Heart of a Soldier, the book based on Stewart’s New Yorker article “The real heroes are dead.” (“The real heroes are dead” is what Rescorla would say in response to recognition of his heroism on the battlefield in Vietnam.) It’s a good book that touches on profound themes in a thought-provoking way: life and death, love and friendship,
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September 11, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Following 9/11 the New York Times ran Portraits of Grief profiling many of those lost in the 9/11 attacks. The Times attributes authorship of these artful profiles collectively to Kirk Johnson, N.R. Kleinfeld, David Barstow, Barbara Stewart, Jane Gross, Neela Banerjee, Constance L. Hays, Lynette Holloway, Janny Scott and Somini Sengupta. We can’t capture the magnitude of the loss, or the meaning of who and what we lost, but the
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September 3, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Whenever I am in my car for more than a few minutes I listen to history lectures from the Teaching Company’s Great Courses. It has been my biggest lifestyle improvement of recent years. I can’t begin to convey how much I have learned about history, especially ancient history, in the last five years. Currently I am listening to a lecture series on the conquest of the Americas. The professor is
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August 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I’ve subscribed and canceled my subscription to the New York Review of Books approximately 10 times over the years. I am currently in a subscribed phase of the cycle. One attraction is the rich archive available to subscribers. Yesterday the editors noted in their weekly email that it was the 115th anniversary of LBJ’s birth: “Johnson was, of course, a frequent subject in the magazine, but it was in the
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August 20, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I have read many books about the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime. I have tried to put myself in the place of American observers, German (and German Jewish) citizens of Germany, and citizens of the countries that Hitler conquered. To take just a few examples in random order, I think of: • William Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Corresondent, 1934-1941 • Rudolf Vrba, I
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