History
September 11, 2025 — 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, 2025 — 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 4, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In June 1945, at the opening of the general election campaign, Winston Churchill gave a speech that was broadcast over the BBC. Having recently read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, Churchill observed: My friends, I must tell you that a Socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Although it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism
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September 3, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Peter Wood is president of the invaluable National Association of Scholars, a former professor of anthropology and college provost, and the author of compelling books including 1620, Wrath, A Bee in the Mouth, and (my favorite) Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. He writes with lucidity and grace on questions of history and public policy both in his books and his articles, as in the current Spectator World essay “The
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September 1, 2025 — John Hinderaker
As regular readers may recall, we covered Minnesota’s creation of a new state seal and state flag, to replace the ones that had been in place for well over a century. Leftists, who controlled the committee responsible for the new seal and flag, erased Minnesota’s history by adopting a bland, meaningless, geometric corporate logo. No more pioneer, no more Indian–history, erased. The same thing is happening in Massachusetts. Like Minnesota,
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September 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I wrote about the Eighth Circuit opinion in Schmitt v. Rebertus. Reading the opinion reminded me that I had written a Weekly Standard column about Charles Colson’s work with prisoners in the second half of his life. The Washington Post defamed Colson in a book review by Professor David Greenberg published in 2005. I think Colson’s organization appealed to Hugh Hewitt for help and Hugh referred them to me.
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August 26, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I have faithfully traced the downward path of Tucker Carlson into the gutter. It started while he was at Fox News, but the descent has picked up speed since management showed him the door. Now that he supports himself, he is free at last to reveal the inner Tucker. I am grateful for the company I have found while tracing his descent. It’s tiresome work, but it has to be
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August 19, 2025 — Scott Johnson
This past June we published three posts by Chris Flannery on Mark Twain. These posts were the surplus of Chris’s Claremont Review of Books review “Pure gold and his American Mind column “To absquatulate.” The review, the column, and the posts were all triggered by Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain. Chris now returns with the American Mind column “The Vindication of Booker T. Washington,” in the course of
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August 15, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Our old friend William Campenni is a retired engineer and a 33-year Air Force/Air National Guard fighter pilot. He served in the same Texas Air National Guard as President Bush and has exposed the absurdities of the CBS News “New Questions on Bush Guard Duty” story several times over (most recently, here). Bill writes to memorialize V-J Day: * * * * * Today — August 15 — marks the
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August 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
This is my final note on Free France’s Lion, General Philippe Leclerc, at least for the time being. As I have observed in these notes, Leclerc was a man of sterling character. It shines forth from the pages of William Mortimer Moore’s biography. General Leclerc’s leadership of France’s Second Armored Division essentially came to an end in Munich and Berchtesgaden in April and May 1945. At Leclerc’s request the division
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August 7, 2025 — Scott Johnson
It was 80 years ago yesterday that we dropped the big one on Hiroshima. I pulled down my copy of Richard B. Frank’s Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire in honor of the day. What an excellent book. Given current events, this photo caption struck me: “Perhaps the most ominous feature of Okinawa was the integration of the civilian population into the defense: this led to the deaths
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August 6, 2025 — Scott Johnson
It was 80 years ago today…that we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This is adapted from a post I wrote in 2016. Please forgive my anachronistic citation of Barrack Obama. He can stand in for proponents of the revisionism that threatens to obliterate historical reality. Richard Frank’s excellent column “The Atomic Bombing of Japan Was Justified” of this date is unfortunately behind NR’s paywall. In the words of the
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August 6, 2025 — Scott Johnson
on the way to the Bulge. But before I get there, I want to return briefly to the subject of General Philippe Leclerc. Studying up on Free France’s Lion, as I wrote in the linked post, I was most struck by his sterling character. His bravery was one component of it, but his character as a whole shines forth most vividly from William Mortimer Moore’s biography of Leclerc. Leclerc was
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August 2, 2025 — Scott Johnson
on the way to London last night. My flight from Dulles was canceled. My wife’s two flights from Minneapolis were both canceled — one in the morning to meet me in DC, then one in the afternoon to get her to London from Minneapolis after the flight to DC was canceled. As one thing led to another, we gave up on the prospect of joining our group in London. All
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July 29, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Leading Free French forces in Africa, Leclerc was assigned the mission of forming France’s 2nd Armored Division in mid-1943. The unit was to be equipped by the United States and organized along the lines of an American division. The division first drew on Leclerc’s Free French forces operating in Chad and other parts of Africa. After training in Africa and England, it embarked for Utah Beach as an attachment to
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July 28, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I haven’t taken too many vacations that disrupt my early morning Power Line shift, but we are leaving on a structured World War II London/Normandy/Bulge tour this coming Friday that I am afraid will put me of out of commission for a while. The tour leader has assigned each of us parts to play for presentations at appropriate spots on our itinerary. General Philippe Leclerc, c’est moi, despite the fact
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July 26, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I mentioned the Fugs’ Tuli Kupferberg as the co-author of 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft (1967), a genuine relic of the era. Which reminds me… Visiting New York with my father in 1967 or so, I persuaded him to take me to see the Fugs in one of their now legendary nightly performances at Greenwich Village’s Players Theater. It was a memorable show with something close to the
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