Month: April 2015

The Many Uses of Thomas Jefferson: “Once a Liberal Icon, Jefferson’s Now Claimed by Both Left and Right” |History News Network

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Who owns Jefferson? The historian Andrew Burstein examines the many uses and abuses of Jefferson’s legacy in our nation’s ongoing culture wars. He concludes: “Distortion of the historical Jefferson reminds us that people believe what they want to believe. Our democratic politics actually depends on a mass psychology that advances through artful manipulation. We may protest the “long train of abuses” (to quote from the Declaration) that attach to statements made in Jefferson’s name; but he continues to occupy a privileged position as we converse with the past and seek to reconcile it, somehow, with our relatively disorganized present. Whoever “owns” Jefferson (or the collective founders) takes themselves to be inheritors of America’s essential ideals.” Read the entire article here:

History News Network | Once a Liberal Icon, Jefferson’s Now Claimed by Both Left and Right.

Thomas_Jefferson_by_Rembrandt_Peale,_1800

History News Network | What We now Know About the Birth of Israel Thanks to the Opening of British MI5 Archives

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This is an interesting interview with Bruce Hoffman, author of Anonymous Soldiers. Here is one of the questions he answers: “In the preface to Anonymous Soldiers, you ask the question, ‘does terrorism work?’ What are the circumstances and factors that enable some terrorist campaigns to succeed and others to fail based on the lessons from the Irgun and Lehi’s campaigns?” Read the entire interview here:

History News Network | What We now Know About the Birth of Israel Thanks to the Opening of British MI5 Archives.

Anonymous Soldiers the Struggle for Israel

History News Network | Why Indiana Republicans Blundered so Badly on Gay Rights

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The legal scholar Victoria Saker Woeste evaluates the Indiana RFRA law (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) and concludes: “They relied only on the legal opinion that portrayed religious liberty as under attack. But most people across Indiana—and indeed the nation—do not believe that it is. That is why the backlash was so swift, so furious, and so scalding.This is a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war. A balanced approach to civil rights should prevail at the state level, but Indiana’s RFRA “fix” stops short of guaranteeing equal civil rights to individuals regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Until that oversight is addressed, Governor Pence should spend some time improving his Captain Renault impersonation.” Read the entire article here:

History News Network | Why Indiana Republicans Blundered so Badly on Gay Rights.

Indiana protests against RFRA 2015

Remembering the Oklahoma City bombing 20 years later – Yahoo News

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My hope is that the memory of this event will serve as a constant reminder of the consequences of hatred and revenge.

Twenty years ago today Timothy McVeigh drove up to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City with a truck full of explosives. When the bomb detonated it killed 168 people, 19 of which were children. Before 9/11 this was the single most deadly act of terrorism in the United States. When this happened, I was getting ready to graduate from ASU with my B.S. What should have been an exciting time suddenly became a time of despair. I had already become cynical as a result of the hate-filled radio shows and the nasty politics that I had recently become aware of and I was certain that there was a connection between the hate mongering and this act of terror. McVeigh’s hatred of the federal government was not the result of just the blunder at Waco, where David Koresh and many of his followers were killed, it was just the final straw in a series perceived threats. He was part of a culture that saw the world divided between themselves with their guns and the government that was trying to take their guns away. In his hatred McVeigh couldn’t see that the “evil” federal government was made up of average Americans just trying to live their lives.

Remembering the Oklahoma City bombing 20 years later – Yahoo News.

Oklahoma City Bombing 15th Aniversary

The Cost of Revenge: “The Horrific Unintended Consequence of Doolittle’s Courageous Raid on Tokyo” | History News Network

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Today is the anniversary of the famous Doolittle raid on Japan. But before we celebrate we should remember the cost paid by innocent Chinese civilians for this act of revenge. James M. Scott explains that, “that success came at a horrible—and until now—largely unknown price paid by the Chinese, who were victims of a retaliatory campaign by the Japanese Army that claimed an estimated 250,000 lives and saw families drowned in wells, entire towns burned, and communities devastated by bacteriological warfare.” This story should remind us that revenge has caused more human suffering than any other human motivation and that it has done so with little or no benefit other than the joy some get from it.

Scott also raises the subject of Japanese attempts to deny their own history: “Unlike Germany, whose leaders have for decades attempted to atone for the Holocaust, the Japanese have increasingly tried to disavow their nation’s legacy of cruelty, from the use Korean comfort women to the Rape of Nanking.” So, in conclusion he implores us: “As we celebrate the rightful heroism of Jimmy Doolittle and the 79 volunteer airmen who flew with him on one of the most celebrated raids of the war, it is important that we take time to honor the sacrifice paid by a quarter million Chinese. It is equally imperative that we as a nation refuse to allow Japanese leaders to disown their nation’s role in this and other wartime horrors.” Read the entire article here:

History News Network | The Horrific Unintended Consequence of Doolittle’s Courageous Raid on Tokyo.

doolittle_raid

More on Putin’s abuse of history: “Vladimir Putin: History Man?” |History News Network

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In his review of  Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, Walter G. Moss examines how Putin uses and abuses history for his own purposes. Fittingly, he concludes:
“Putin is far from unique among politicians, or even among professional historians, in attempting to manipulate history. But a true “history man” (or woman) is primarily a truth-seeker, one who puts discovering the truth before any political or personal causes, whether they are of an ideological, national, patriotic, class, ethnic, or gender nature. Philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch in her The Sovereignty of Good writes of the “honesty and humility of the scholar who does not even feel tempted to suppress the fact which damns his theory.” Without denying that Putin believes much of what he says, he possesses neither the honesty nor humility of Murdoch’s hypothetical scholar. Politicians who do possess such virtues are rare—in any country. And even we professional historians must fight a constant battle to prevent our biases and causes from trumping truth-seeking.” Read the entire article here:

History News Network | Vladimir Putin: History Man?

Mr Putin Operative in the Kremlin

How ‘Wolf Hall’ will entertain millions — and threaten to distort history in the process – The Washington Post

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The new BBC Masterpiece theater “Wolf Hall” once again raises questions about the boundaries of artistic license in the portrayal of real historical events. Gregory Wolfe argues that “Wolf Hall,” which is based on of a series of novels written by Hilary Mantel, went too far in its distortions of history. As a result Wolfe believes that “Mantel’s version could obscure important lessons from that dark period that have continuing relevance for the present moment.” Read his entire augment here:

How ‘Wolf Hall’ will entertain millions — and threaten to distort history in the process – The Washington Post.

Mark Rylance plays Thomas Cromwell in “Wolf Hall.” (Giles (Keyte/Playground & Company Pictures for MASTERPIECE/BBC)

Mark Rylance plays Thomas Cromwell in “Wolf Hall.” (Giles (Keyte/Playground & Company Pictures for MASTERPIECE/BBC)

Economics and history: Economic history is dead; long live economic history? | The Economist

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There is an interesting article in The Economist arguing that economic history is valuable “and should be—very much alive.” Read the entire article:

Economics and history: Economic history is dead; long live economic history? | The Economist.

great-depression

“Austrian Economics: Made in the USA” | History News Network

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Janek Wasserman explains how Austrian economics was reduced to a simplified ideology as it was popularized in the U.S. “While the US trip did wonders for Hayek’s public profile, his long-time Austrian friends and colleagues had misgivings about Hayek Lite. The condensedversion—about which Hayek initially had some reservations but ultimately appreciated—lost most of the book’s nuance, becoming a dogmatic defense of free markets and an ill-defined liberty.” Read the entire article here:

History News Network | Austrian Economics: Made in the USA.

Hayek

“The”Two Obstacles Ministers Had to Overcome Before They Could Turn Lincoln into a Saint” | History News Network

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According to the historian Gary Scott Smithis the two obstacles to making Lincoln a saint were: “first, that he was fatally shot in a theater, an embarrassingly unsanctified place for a savior during the Victorian era. The clergy rationalized his attendance at Ford Theater, arguing that he had gone reluctantly to please his wife and gratify others. The second, larger difficulty these pastors encountered was that Lincoln had never explicitly testified to his faith in Christ. While some pastors bitterly regretted that he did not publicly profess faith in Jesus Christ as his Lord, others countered that his actions demonstrated his faith or that he had accepted Christ as his savior in response to his son Willie’s death in 1862, or at Gettysburg in 1863, or at some other unknown time.” For further examination of Lincoln’s religious sentiments and the difficulties in making him an American saint read the entire article:

History News Network | The Two Obstacles Ministers Had to Overcome Before They Could Turn Lincoln into a Saint.

Lincoln