The events of Charlottesville have me thinking about my role as an historian and teacher. This was reinforced by these comments by James Alex Fields Jr.’s high school history teacher. I don’t think any one teacher can be responsible for the ideas of a single student.…
An old division is rearing it’s head again in the Democratic Party. It’s gone public in the disruption of Bernie Sanders’s speeches by #blacklivesmatter protesters, first at Netroots Nation in July and then again in Seattle on Saturday (see here).…
In honor the 4th of July weekend, I’m sharing this post I wrote last year at this time:
I recently had the opportunity to sing “American the Beautiful.” The lines that most hit me are in the third verse:
…Oh, beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
It’s time again to look at the state of the presidential race. What should we expect from the ‘invisible primary’ in the coming months?
My guess is that we will see at least a few candidates get more open about their 2016 decisions early next month.…
President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline bill, unsurprisingly. Without getting too bogged down in the political theater of this, I found it to be somewhat more of a “play to the base” type of move than one we would come to expect from such a pragmatist.…
Graeme Wood recently headlined the March issue of The Atlantic with his piece What ISIS Really Wants. It’s a broad reaching and disturbing look at the underpinnings of their organization, their goals, and ultimately what likely is the best course of action for the United States in containing and ultimately defeating ISIS. …
I was watching State of Affairs the other night (I know, I know, it’s ridiculous) and noticed a positive element of partisanship (party loyalty and separation) that’s worth pointing out.*
What caught my attention tonight was a secret meeting between a high-level staffer and a leader in the opposition party.…
Scott Walker, the current governor of Wisconsin, had sounded to me like someone who’d universally be considered a top contender for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election. I’d only been peripherally aware of him, mostly from his showdown with unions in his state a couple of years ago.…
As a follow-up to my last week’s post, I want to write about a particular idea of freedom from U.S. history: Liberty of Contract. It’s an example of how complicated the basic idea of “freedom” really is.
Liberty of Contract is the idea that no outside entities should interfere with contractual agreements between individuals, especially between employers and employees.…
There is a question I want to ask. It highlights my frustration with government over the course of my lifetime but also leaves the door open for hopefully some positive news that I’ve missed. The question – what major pieces of legislation have been passed in the last 25 years that have been fundamentally good for the country?…
When I teach American History, this is among the questions I ask my students most often. This was especially the case on Friday, when my students wrestled with documents by Herbert Hoover, FDR, Henry Wallace, Henry Luce, and Friedrich Hayek. Each described their vision for what American society was or should be in the WWII era.…
Header image by Tom Plewe © 2015
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