History
July 21, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Not content to leave things well enough alone, The Nation decided to go into full clown mode with this Tweet and article: Is the underlying article as bad as this Tweet suggests? You make the call: Within the United States, launch sites can exploit marginalized populations as well. For instance, industry and government agencies in the Mojave Desert region—one of the nation’s oldest sites for space activities—employ locals as manufacturers
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July 20, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Lots of deserved recollections on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing over the last few weeks and months. There’s not much need to repeat the main themes of the scientific marvel or adventurous spirit of that glorious enterprise. Some political aspects of Apollo, however, have not received sufficient attention. Specifically, the liberal attitude toward the moon landing is emblematic of how American liberalism had lost confidence in itself
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July 15, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Harvey Klehr is the Andrew W. Mellon professor emeritus of politics and history at Emory University, and co-author, with John Haynes, of The Secret World of American Communism, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, and In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage. Tomorrow is the official publication date of Professor Klehr’s new book, The Millionaire Was a Soviet Mole: The Twisted Life of David Karr. We invited Professor Klehr to bring
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July 12, 2019 — Steven Hayward
One of my teachers in graduate school, the great constitutional historian Leonard Levy, insisted that “a history must serve its readers with explanations that suit the horizons of their curiosity and with writing that entertains and stirs them.” No one exemplifies that vivid style of biography and history better than Andrew Roberts. I caught up with Andrew in San Francisco this week, where we had a wide-ranging conversation about Churchill,
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July 9, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Ross Perot has passed away. Perot was a hugely successful businessman, but will be remembered, of course, mainly for his presidential campaign, as a third party candidate in 1992. It was a remarkable run. At times, if I recall correctly, polling placed Perot in the same tier as his opponents, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. In the end, Perot captured 19 percent of the vote. That’s truly exceptional for
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July 4, 2019 — 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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July 4, 2019 — Scott Johnson
On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech. In his speech Douglas sounded the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and
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June 24, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Very sad news this evening of the passing of Herbert Meyer, one of the genuine heroes of the Cold War for his service in the CIA under President Reagan. It was Meyer who, in a famous memo to Reagan in November 1983 when things were very tense with our intermediate-range missile deployments in Europe, wrote: “if present trends continue, we are going to win the Cold War.” Over eight vivid
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June 24, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
William Faulkner wrote: “The past is never dead; it’s not even past.” The past certainly isn’t past for Joe Biden. He can’t stop talking about it. One suspects he’s still living in the distant past. The latest example is his over-the-top statement comparing the election of President Trump to the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Biden stated: I think what’s happening now is, I think that Donald
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June 22, 2019 — Steven Hayward
As mentioned in our podcast with Jonathan Adler yesterday, today is the 50th anniversary of the infamous Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland. The fire continues to be a prominent and compelling image of man’s relationship to the environment. Immortalized in song (Randy Newman’s “Burn On” and R.E.M’s “Cuyahoga”), and fodder for countless Cleveland-bashing jokes from standup comics, the incongruously short-lived fire (it was put out in about 20 minutes, causing
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June 20, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to be among the intellectual leaders of the Democratic Party despite, or on account of, the near daily demonstration of her nescience. I don’t think she can safely be ignored. She recently opined: “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are: concentration camps.” Israel’s Yad Vashem doesn’t wade into American politics, but it made an exception in
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June 18, 2019 — Scott Johnson
While the academic study of military history is in a state of sickness unto death in the academy, it lives because of its popularity with the American people. In his terrific essay “Why study war,” Victor Davis Hanson observes: The university’s aversion to the study of war certainly doesn’t reflect public lack of interest in the subject. Students love old-fashioned war classes on those rare occasions when they’re offered, usually
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June 17, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The Tikvah Fund has posted an intensely interesting podcast with Jerusalem Post editor Yaakov Katz here; I have embedded it below. Katz is the author of Shadow Strike, a new and deeply reported account of Israel’s strike on Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007. The story remains of current interest in various aspects. Tikvah introduces the podcast as follows: On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir
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June 13, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In his 1995 autobiography, Colin Powell tried to justify America’s refusal to intervene in the Balkan Wars by claiming that these wars were driven by “ancient hatreds” in a “thousand year-old hornet’s nest.” I’d call this a misreading of history, except that Powell probably was not reading history. Maybe he picked up this trope at a cocktail party. In any case, the clash between Croats and Serbs in the 1990s
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June 11, 2019 — Steven Hayward
As I was preparing my class notes for today (topic: How to Understand the Declaration of Independence), I realized that we are nigh upon the 200th anniversary of an obscure but fascinating court case out of Maryland in 1819—fascinating not simply for the closing argument, but for who made it. The case involved a Methodist minister named Jacob Gruber who had delivered an abolitionist sermon to an audience of some
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June 8, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Dartmouth News reports that the college is celebrating an event that happened 50 years ago, on June 7, 1969: As part of the yearlong 250th anniversary commemoration, Dartmouth is revisiting various turning points in its history. On Friday, the clock turns back 50 years to the afternoon of May 7, 1969, when students who opposed the Vietnam War occupied the Parkhurst administration building. Paul and I, both Communists at the
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June 6, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I suppose the headline for this entry might need to become a regular Power Line series between now and election day. It was as predictable as the sunrise that Biden’s long-time support of the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for elective abortion, would crumple under pressure from the Abortion Absolutists who now control Democratic Party dogma. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that he crumpled so quickly. Get used
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