Twenty years after the Panic of 1837 (described in a previous entry), Wisconsin suffered again when the nation plunged into another depression. The economy had boomed for a decade. Railroads extended their reach all across the nation, cutting the cost
On August 3, 1948 Whittaker Chambers---then a Senior Editor at "Time" Magazine and a former member of the Communist Party---testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Un-American Action Committee (HUAC) in Washington D.C. that Alger Hiss---then the President of the
It was a neat historical swap. In 1948 the Republican "elitist" Thomas Dewey had been defeated by Truman, the everyman. Now Republicans were using their own "everywoman" to discredit a candidate they decried as an elitist. A neat trick--if people
No doubt inspired by the perverse Holocaust "conference" sponsored two years ago by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, student members of the Basij militia have just published a book of cartoons mocking and minimizing the Shoah, just in time for a
America needs immigrant families to continue their 'Americanization' (as Barbara Jordan defined it). This will ease native born Americans' anxieties towards immigration and cultural change. America must also reward the hard work toward integration these newcomers make by embracing them
Recent developments help us to see the roles of Friedman, Greenspan, Reagan, Simon and Gramm in a new light. Extremism is problematic, whether it comes from the left or the right. In the 1990s the collapse of communist states demonstrated
That sharp student of race and change in the U.S., Malcolm X, once observed that white supremacy was like a Cadillac. Both featured constant model changes, but also an ongoing pattern that gave the branding continuity across years and generations.
With the takeover of defaulted mortgages by the government, the American people, like John McCain, now have no idea of how many homes they own. The lessons of Mayor Ed Koch's ten year housing plan suggest that this crisis can
Sarah Palin knows how to hunt wolves. She can skin a moose. She lives way up there on America's last frontier. So, we might think, here's a national candidate who represents the "real" American West, not its Hollywood imitation. That's
