History
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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August 14, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I didn’t see this coming. Christopher Rufo draws his map for the counterrevolution we need from Richard Nixon. He starts with Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, to which my mentor Jeffrey Hart contributed the line: “Ramsey Clark is a conscientious objector in the war against crime.” Well, Rufo has got me thinking. Rufo advocates his plan in the Summer 2023 City Journal essay “Bring on the counterrevolution” and in his Manhattan
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August 10, 2023 — Scott Johnson
David McCullough covers President Truman’s recognition of Israel at pages 618-620 of his biography of Truman. Truman recognized Israel within minutes of its Declaration of Independence, with the support of the American people but against the great weight of the government (at least the executive branch). Truman’s recognition is set forth in the key document posted by the Truman Library here. McCullough quotes Truman’s later reflections: The difficulty with many
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August 4, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One reason I’m not posting much right now is that I’m in the middle of a three-day conference for scholars at the Reagan Library that they kindly titled after my books, “The Age of Reagan.” Last night the conference featured me in an after-dinner conversation with Beth Fischer of the University of Toronto, author of The Myth of Triumphalism: Rethinking President Reagan’s Cold War Legacy. Don’t be misled by the
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August 4, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Everything biographer/historian David Garrow writes is worth reading. Garrow is the author, most recently, of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama (2017). This staggeringly researched book — Garrow spent nine years on it — covers 1078 pages of text (even though Garrow relegates his comments on Obama’s presidency to a 50-page epilogue). Rising Star is full of discoveries that Garrow documents in great detail. The 1078 pages of text
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August 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford D. 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 most recent column is “Anniversay of a forever war” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power
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July 22, 2023 — John Hinderaker
A remarkably interesting letter (“Eyes Only”) that Richard Nixon sent to then-President Bill Clinton in March 1994, after Nixon returned from a trip to Russia and Ukraine, has been declassified and made public. Luke Nichter writes about Nixon’s letter in the Wall Street Journal: Nixon anticipated a more belligerent Russia, the rise of someone like Vladimir Putin, and worsening relations between Moscow and Kyiv. Nixon emphasized the importance of Ukraine,
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July 9, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I touched on the enraging story of XiYue Wang in “The Princeton historian mugged by Princeton.” The Middle East Forum invited Wang to tell the story of his captivity in Iran to a Washington audience. I have posted the video below. MEF’s Clifford Smith converts Wang’s speech into an excellent narrative account in the post “Academic Perfidy and Diplomatic Appeasement Embolden the Islamic Republic.” Listening to Wang’s speech, I confess
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July 4, 2023 — 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 2, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Mansion section of Friday’s Wall Street Journal includes Marc Myers’s edited interview with the actor Wendell Pierce. It seemed to me an unlikely place to “house” this particular interview. I only came across it because of the featured Mansion story on privately owned Frank Lloyd Wright houses, of which the Twin Cities area has several. Pierce’s credits include TV’s The Wire and Treme, the films Ray and Malcolm X,
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June 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I wrote this on Father’s Day in 2010. It is a post that struck a chord with at least a few readers. I amplified it in 2020 and am taking the liberty of reposting these reflections in honor of the day. My father was a thoughtful man in his own way. In the last years of his life he recited for me the things for which he was most grateful.
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June 16, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Victor Davis Hanson is probably my favorite living historian and observer of the current scene. Peter Robinson caught up with him at his family farm in central California for his most recent installment of Uncommon Knowledge. This installment is the first of two parts: “In part one of this two-part interview, we cover Hanson’s rich and fascinating family history and the sweeping changes he’s lived through in terms of both
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June 6, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Over at NRO Eric Hogan recalls “The angels of Omaha” with a focus on the heroics of Captain Joseph Dawson, Lieutenant John Spalding, and Sergeant Philip Streczyk at Omaha Beach 79 years ago today. “At the western end of Omaha,” he writes, “the first wave of soldiers was all but wiped out, barely able to shoot back against the Germans. Succeeding waves piled up on the sea wall. Chaos reigned.
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May 29, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Power Line observes its twenty-first anniversary this Memorial Day weekend. I am taking the liberty of looking back by pulling out three of my favorite posts of the past twenty-one years. This is the third. Stephen Spender wrote in his most famous poem: “I think continually of those who were truly great.” Today I am thinking of Leo Thorsness. He was truly great. When Leo died on May 3, 2017,
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May 25, 2023 — John Hinderaker
How bad is America’s education system? Worse than you can possibly imagine. At George Washington University (annual cost $78,335, although probably no non-Chinese citizen actually pays that, as college tuition numbers are fraudulent), students protested against the school’s teams being called the “Colonials.” George Washington University changed its “Colonials” moniker to “Revolutionaries” after facing scrutiny from students who deemed the school’s mascot as offensive. Revolutionaries! I suppose we should be
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