History
September 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The National Association of Scholars is hosting an online conference responding to the odious Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project promulgated by the New York Times. The conference began yesterday and runs through Friday. After a welcome by NAS president Peter Wood, Peter Kirsanow kicked off the conference with a sort of keynote speech. Kirsanow was followed by Professors Diana Schaub speaking on Frederick Douglass and John Stauffer on the white abolitionist
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September 12, 2020 — Scott Johnson
With incredible courage and composure, the passengers and crew of United Flight 93 waged our first counterattack against al Qaeda on 9/11. Recounting Todd Beamer’s call to GTE operator Lisa Jefferson, the AP’s Joann Loviglio began to piece the story together a few days later in “Last words from victims: ‘Let’s roll.'” In the video below, Jefferson recalls her conversation with Todd Beamer. In a 2002 letter to William Buckley,
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September 9, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden and Thomas Dewey don’t seem similar. When Dewey ran for president in 1948 (his second attempt as the Republican nominee), he was 46 years old. He had been a brilliant prosecutor and was the successful governor of New York, then the nation’s largest state. Biden is 77 years old. He’s been in politics longer than Dewey had been alive when he ran in 1948. He didn’t distinguish himself
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September 4, 2020 — Scott Johnson
In case you missed it, Matt Margolis documents Joe Biden’s history lesson to a lucky audience in Kenosha yesterday: “Prof. Biden Claims ‘a Black Man Invented the Light Bulb, Not a White Guy Named Edison'” (video below). Biden instructed his audience in the higher sociological wisdom with which Obama loved to condescend to us: “People fear that’s, which, that which is different.” And then the history: “We gotta, for example,
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September 2, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Our friend Jean Yarbrough is the Gary M. Pendy Sr. Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Government at Bowdoin College and the author, most recently, of Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition, 2013 winner of the American Political Science Association’s Richard E. Neustadt Prize for the best book on the American presidency. If you have ever wondered what we are to make of Theodore Roosevelt, Professor Yarbrough’s book
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August 18, 2020 — Steven Hayward
One of the legendary milestones of the 1960s was the so-called “summer of love” centered around the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco in 1967, when thousands of “hippies” descended on the town to start their new utopia. Daniel Patrick Moynihan thought the “summer of love” counterculture represented the first heresies of liberalism. “Who are these outrageous young people?” Moynihan asked. “I suggest to you they are Christians arrived on the scene
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August 13, 2020 — Scott Johnson
This is the third of three planned previews of the new (Summer) issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Having reviewed the issue in galley, I selected essays and reviews I thought some Power Line readers would find of interest. With the indulgence of the editors of the CRB, we are extending the preview with a bonus edition tomorrow. Please stay tuned. Today I have two books reviews that I
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August 9, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Judge Stephen Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has died at age 83, reportedly due to the Wuhan coronavirus. The statement of Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan praising his colleague is here. This tribute by Aaron Nelson includes moving praise from one of his liberal colleagues, Judge David Tatel. Williams was a staunch conservative. Nelson’s article begins by quoting the following opening line by Judge
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August 7, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
I have no special insight into whom Joe Biden will pick as his running mate. The conventional wisdom seems to be that he likely will select Kamala Harris. I have no reason to disagree. But if Biden makes his selection based on comfort level and personal taste, he probably will reject Harris and perhaps pick Susan Rice. Rice has serious flaws, but also one virtue that the other contenders on
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July 27, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The headline for this post comes straight from Phil Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research, and a two-time guest on the Power Line Podcast. It refers to the de facto admission today from the impresario of the New York Times‘s egregious “1619 Project,” Nicole Hannah-Jones, that in fact it is a purely political propaganda effort. Here’s Hannah-Jones’s extraordinarily candid Tweet today: “Not a history”!! A “work of journalism”!?
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July 8, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Anticipating the 50th anniversary of what the French euphemistically call “the events” of ’68, Professor Daniel Mahoney provided a retrospective assessment based on the work of Raymond Aron, Roger Scruton, and Pierre Manent in the Law & Liberty essay “France’s psychodrama of 1968.” Steve revisited the subject with Professor Mahoney last week in the podcast posted here. Rereading Professor Mahoney’s 2018 essay, I was most struck by this paragraph toward
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July 7, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon has put together the SUPERcuts video below illustrating the Orwellian revision of Mount Rushmore. Past statements pretending to admiration are going down the memory hole. Oh, Big Brother Sibster. And don’t forget: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. If we didn’t understand before, we should be getting a handle on the importance of this axiom right about now now. Perhaps what we have here is progress of a kind.
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July 6, 2020 — Steven Hayward
In my podcast with Fred Siegel a few weeks back about the rioting and deterioration of New York and other American cities, Fred remarked that the real cause of our current trouble is that “the sixties never ended.” And a lot of people have been saying that 2020 reminds them of 1968—the year when everything went wrong and the country seemed to be on the brink of coming apart. It may
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July 5, 2020 — Scott Johnson
As I listened to President Trump’s July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore (White House text here, video below), I couldn’t believe how good it was. One measure of the speech is the campaign of falsehood undertaken by the press condemning it in unison. As I wrote here yesterday morning, I had only my own reaction to go on. Now I can commend the following columns to the attention of interested
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July 4, 2020 — Scott Johnson
RealClearPolitics has made available its Independence Day Series for publication with attribution. Below is Dan Mahoney’s column “What Does Our Nation Mean to Us? Rejecting the Culture of Hate,” followed by Steve Hayward’s podcast with Professor Mahoney on the themes of this column. Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption University. He has written numerous books, essays, and reviews on statesmanship, religion and politics, totalitarianism,
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July 4, 2020 — Scott Johnson
In the vicious culture war that is dividing our nation, President Trump has taken the side of the United States. This is what I get out of Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore last night in South Dakota. For this — for his advocacy of the United States in the culture war — Trump will never be forgiven by the our cultural arbiters. This is what I get get out of
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July 4, 2020 — Scott Johnson
President Calvin Coolidge celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926, with a speech providing a magisterial review of the history and thought underlying the Declaration. His speech on the occasion deserves to be read and studied in its entirety. The following paragraph, however, is particularly relevant to the challenge that confronts us in the variants of the progressive dogma that pass themselves off today
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