The fighting at Lexington and Concord didn’t happen because the British army came to collect taxes. It was gun control. Of course, the government-run schools don’t teach this. What finally forced the patriots into a shooting war with the British Army at Lexington and...
History
History Last, Polemics First: A Critical Review of Jacob Heilbrunn’s ‘America Last’
by Brandan P. Buck | Apr 2, 2024 | Book Reviews, Featured Articles, History, Politics
The Western commentariat has spilled much ink and expended considerable effort attempting to explain our era of political malaise, particularly the disruptions underway within the Republican Party and the American Right. It is into that maelstrom that Jacob Heilbrunn...
Neocon Charlie Sykes’ Tortured Analogies, Past and Present
by Brandan P. Buck | Mar 21, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, History
There is a booming op-ed industry that peddles tortured World War II analogies. The latest offering from its tired assembly line was published by Politico and penned by unreconstructed neoconservative Charlie Sykes. As with other offerings in recent years (and indeed,...
Best of the Best, Worst of the Worst
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Mar 4, 2024 | Featured Articles, History
The past few weeks have seen a predictable reaction to the release of (yet another) survey of “experts” regarding the proper ranking of United States presidents. Apart from the inherent problems any such attempted ranking poses, problems my colleague Hunter DeRensis...
Reevaluating Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston
by Hunter DeRensis | Jan 2, 2024 | Book Reviews, Featured Articles, History
The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West by Timothy B. Smith (LSU Press: 2023), 248 pages "You were still reading that book when I walked by three hours ago. It must be a good one." Sitting outside the cafe, I looked up to see a...
TGIF: Beware Elitists in Populist Clothing
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 22, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
We're led to believe that today's political struggles are largely a contest between populists and elitists. But something besides libertarians is missing from that simple tale: the elitists in populist clothing, or elitist populists. We have no better example than a...
TGIF: Ahad Ha’Am’s Prophetic Warning about Political Zionism
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 15, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, History, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Ukrainian-born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (1856-1927), whose pen name was Ahad Ha'Am (Hebrew for one of the people), was a proponent of Spiritual, or Cultural, Zionism, which made him a rival to Theodor Herzl and Political Zionism, the movement dedicated to creating a...
TGIF: Inspiration for the Nakba?
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 8, 2023 | Featured Articles, History, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The unspeakable violence that plagues Israel and Palestine daily relates in part to the assertion of an ancient, ancestral, and even divinely bestowed property right to a parcel of land, which is often called "holy" and "promised." For background, here are a few...