Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has prompted a heated debate over the meaning and viability of “democratic socialism.” In response to claims that it is un-American, Lawrence Wittner demonstrates that democratic socialism has long been part of American life: History News Network | Democratic Socialism Has Deep Roots in American Life
Read O’Farrell’s entire proposal here: History News Network | Alas, Eleanor Roosevelt Remains All-Too Relevant to Our Politics
Jonathan Zimmerman puts forward an interesting claim about the fight over guns. He argues that it’s not about guns or “safety,” it’s about “victory.” Just as the prohibition movement wasn’t about drinking, Zimmerman asserts, the same holds true in the current fight over guns. “Even if alcohol prohibition could never make America ‘dry,’ it made its adherents feel as if the country was still theirs.”
While this surely plays a role in the battle over guns, I’m not convinced that it is not really about “safety,” at least for gun control advocates. There have been way too many gun-related deaths.
Read the entire article here: Like Prohibition, the fight over guns is about something else – LA Times
More nonsense coming from Ben Carson with no apparent concern for the truth or the consequences of his claims. Brian Catlos explains why Carson is wrong at the History News Network.
“In the last few weeks, the radical right of the GOP and its various organs have come upon a new concept to cloak their Islamophobia: taqiyya. As they would tell it, taqiyya permits Muslims to lie and, therefore, it effectively makes every Muslim a potential mole, traitor, or fifth-columnist. As Ben Carson, himself a presidential hopeful, would have it, it is because of taqiyya (and not because of simple bigotry) that he believes – the constitutional ban on religious tests for public office notwithstanding – a Muslim should not be permitted to serve as President of the United States. This is a dangerous and insidious argument: not only does it vilify a whole class of people, it does so in a way that makes them permanently suspect. Any Muslim who denies he is practising taqiyya, it may be presumed, may be practicing taqiyya when he or she does so. Therefore, no Muslim can be trusted, ever.”
It’s unfortunate that this kind of nonsense is what has helped him overtake The Donald (who also has a problematic relationship with the truth) in the polls.
“The person most responsible for injecting that virulent strain of partisanship into the Republican party was another dethroned House Speaker — Newt Gingrich. The firebrand conservative leaders today are Gingrich’s children. Gingrich rose to power in the 1980s as the pied piper of a new assertive conservatism that merged the moralistic rhetoric of the New Right, and the mystical conservative faith in tax cuts, into a powerful ideological message. It was Gingrich who manufactured the hyper-partisanship that defines modern politics.”
I remember the Gingrich Revolution all too well! It happened just as I became interested in politics. It made me so sick that I came very close to swearing off politics forever. Luckily, I realized that cynicism was not the answer. To this day I feel sick every time I see Newt. While I don’t think Newt is solely responsible for the nasty and dysfunctional state of politics today, but I agree with Steven M. Gillon that he bears a large share of the responsibility.
Read the entire article here: History News Network | The Gingrich Revolution and the Roots of Republican Dysfunction
“The Republican presidential candidate’s statements about weapons and Germany trivialize history.” Read Steinweis’s incisive critique here: Ben Carson Is Wrong on Guns and the Holocaust – The New York Times
Doug Chayka, The New York Times
“Demagogues are only a joke until they win.”
Another interesting take on what Trump’s campaign tells us about ourselves: What Ronald Reagan Teaches Us About Donald Trump | VICE | United States
“Trump is simply the most visible embodiment of a society that is not merely suspicious of critical thought but disdains it. Trump is the quintessential symbol of the merging of a war-like arrogance, a militant certainty, and as self-absorbed unworldliness in which he is removed from problems of the real world.”
He goes on, “What is clear in this case is that a widespread avoidance of the past has become not only a sign of the appalling lack of historical consciousness in contemporary American culture, but a deliberate political weapon used by the powerful to keep people passive and blind to the truth, if not reduced to a discourse drawn from the empty realm of celebrity culture. This is a discourse in which totalitarian images of the hero, fearless leader, and bold politicians get lost in the affective and ideological registers of what Hannah Arendt once called “the ruin of our categories of thought and standards of judgment.”[5] Of course, there are many factors currently contributing to this production of ignorance and the lobotomizing of individual and collective agency. The forces promoting a deep seated culture of authoritarianism run deep in American society.”
Read Giroux’s thought-provoking essay here: Donald Trump and the Ghosts of Totalitarianism
The fake historian David Barton is at it again. He asserts, “The Bible says if you engage in homosexuality, your body will do things that penalize you…So if you can have a vaccine for AIDS, then you’re keeping your body from penalizing you. I don’t think they’ll ever find a vaccine for AIDS.”
No comment necessary!
Source: Anti-gay ‘historian’ leading pro-Ted Cruz PAC says Bible forbids finding an AIDS vaccine
The historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg weigh in on the present state of politics (spoiler alert: it’s not pretty). They note the long history of demagoguery in the U.S., but they also point out what is different today: “a pliant media and a reality TV culture.” These two additional factors make today’s demagogues significantly more dangerous.
This excerpt sums up the problem: “We have no indication that Trump thinks very hard about consequences. Half-baked generalizations roll off the tongue of the superlative-seeking demagogue. Will his followers ever demand facts from him? Probably not. When you are a demagogue, you only have to promise stuff, identify and threaten the bad guys, make bold declarations like, “I’ll be the best president for the military,” and keep the fans excited. Nothing is real. That how politics operates when it’s all reality TV. And don’t forget to wear your flag pin in the next scene.”
Read the article here: Donald Trump is our creepy new face of demagoguery – Salon.com
History Chick in AZ 