Opinion Forum

Is Governor Romney an Edsel Republican?

February 1st, 2012

By Dan Miller Of course not! Remember the Ford Edsel? A really spiffy new car with a two-tone paint job, lots of chrome and an unfortunate distraction in front? The Edsel in no manner resembles either the Republican party of today or its favored candidate; perish all such heretical conservative thoughts lest you be deemed [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: advertising, Edsel, election, Ford, marketing, promotion, Romney, satire
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

The Church and the Holocaust

January 29th, 2012

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, created in 2005 by a UN General Assembly resolution, coincides with the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945. This is the third of a series of three articles being re-published to observe this solemn day of remembrance. By Tom Carter There has long been [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Catholic, Church, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jews, Pius XII
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Auschwitz and the Holocaust

January 28th, 2012

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, created in 2005 by a UN General Assembly resolution, coincides with the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945. This is the second of a series of three articles being re-published to observe this solemn day of remembrance. By Tom Carter The Auschwitz complex consisted [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Auschwitz, death camp, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jews
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Remembering the Holocaust

January 27th, 2012

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, created in 2005 by a UN General Assembly resolution, coincides with the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945. This is the first of a series of three articles being re-published to observe this solemn day of remembrance. By Tom Carter The Auschwitz concentration camp [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Auschwitz, death camp, International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Enlightened Self-interest and International Relations

January 18th, 2012

By Dan Miller In theory, it may beat commonly praised alternatives. But to what extent can we rely on it in practice? Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872 – 1970) was a British mathematician and philosopher. He wrote prolifically in both disciplines and also wrote a few mediocre short stories. He stood three times, [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Bertrand Russell, foreign policy, Islam, North Korea, self-interest, Somalia
Categories: History, Media, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Iraq: Hot News and History

December 29th, 2011

By Jan Barry “Crisis plagues Iraq as U.S. troops depart — As the last U.S. soldiers exited Iraq Sunday and debate was raging about the nation’s future, political crisis erupted in Baghdad that raised fears of more sectarian strife to come. Iraqiya, a powerful political bloc that draws support largely from Sunni and more secular [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Britain, casualties, costs, democracy, hubris, Iraq, U.S., violence
Categories: History, Military, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

The U.S. Constitution and Civil War

December 27th, 2011

By Dan Miller Emasculating the Constitution is bad way to preserve the nation. The first shots in the United States Civil War were fired by the South during an attack on Fort Sumter a century and a half ago on April 12, 1861, not long after President Lincoln’s election on November 6, 1860 and just [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Civil War, Constitution, Lee, Lincoln, revolution, slavery, states rights
Categories: History, Law, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

The Center of the Earth, North Korea, and Different Cultures

December 22nd, 2011

By Dan Miller Reality is often not as we think or wish it were. I spent the past couple of days writing this article about the impacts of Korean culture and history on its future as well as ours now that Kim Jong-il is dead and his young son, Kim Jong-un, is nominally in charge. [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: DPRK, foreign policy, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, personalities, succession
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Korea Are Necessary

December 21st, 2011

By Dan Miller Although from the same culture, the two Koreas are now very different. In February of this year, North Korea celebrated the sixty-ninth birthday of Dear (not really) Leader Kim Jong-il. Following the official announcement at noon on December 19th of his death on the morning of December 17th, there were many instant [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: China, DPRK, Japan, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, succession
Categories: History, Military, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

The American Dream: Sick but Not Dead

September 16th, 2011

By Seth Forman The American Dream of the past eighty years has been defined as single-family home ownership. Suburbs and single-family home ownership appear to fulfill very powerful aspirations for large numbers of people. “The suburban dream house is the idealization of every immigrant’s Dream — the vassal’s dream of his own castle,” wrote Italian-born [...]

Articles written by Seth Forman
Tags: city, foreclosure, housing, mortgage, ownership, suburban, suburbs
Categories: Economics, History, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Words, Words, Words! I’m So Sick of Words

September 4th, 2011

By Dan Miller Once upon a time, in a far off land, the words Gentleman and Lady had meanings different from today. Gentlemen were males privy to the very person of the King; ladies were females privy to the very person of the Queen. Over the years, the terms came to have more egalitarian, but [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: conservative, gentleman, lady, leftist, liberal, meaning, words
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Vietnam: Another Kind of Adventure

August 23rd, 2011

By Jan Barry W.D. Ehrhart has been turning the tragedy of the Vietnam war inside-out, upside-down and sideways in a whirlwind of memoirs, articles, poems, poetry anthologies and travel pieces since surviving the battle of Hue in 1968—and living to ponder what the hell all the death, destruction and desperate encounters in Indochina added up [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: DMZ, Ehrhart, Hanoi, Hue, Japan, Marines, Takenaga, Vietnam, war
Categories: History, Life, Military | Comments (2) | Home

Shall We Have Another Civil War?

August 10th, 2011

By Dan Miller That would be a very bad idea. Unhappiness approaching panic is in the air. This article by Roger Kimball suggests some of the reasons: The American poet Frank O’Hara wrote a poem whose title I’ve always admired: “Meditations in an Emergency.” That’s where we are now: you can tell it’s an emergency [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Civil War, Constitution, North, slavery, South, sovereignty, states rights
Categories: History, Military, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Sailing for Peace

July 6th, 2011

By Jan Barry Beyond the July 4th fireworks celebrating historic battles against the British empire, American history includes many other memorable moments when courageous acts of conscience stirred the nation to steer a peaceful tack against the winds of war. One of those moments was in the spring of 1958 when a retired Navy captain, [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: activists, anti-nuclear, Bigelow, Golden Rule, peace, Veterans for Peace
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

A Republic … If You Can Keep It

July 5th, 2011

By Tom Carter Interesting, thoughtful column by Joe Scarborough today at Politico. It’s built around the response attributed to Benjamin Franklin when asked by a lady what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had given the people. He said, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” I agree with Scarborough’s view that “…America has [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: 2012, debt, deficits, election, Franklin, republic, Scarborough
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Have a Happy, Reflective, and Fruitful Fourth of July

July 4th, 2011

By Dan Miller Our history can guide our future if we will that it do so. Here are some words from a Fourth of July speech given by Theodore Roosevelt to the citizens of Dickinson, in the Dakotas, back in 1886. Dickinson had a population of about seven hundred but many from other communities came [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: fourth of july, government, idealism, independence, Roosevelt, speech
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Whose Independence Are We Celebrating?

July 4th, 2011

By Tom Carter There’s a lot of discussion about the Declaration of Independence and the unique founding of the United States of America every year at this time. That’s a good thing. But we also should be reflective enough to consider the flaws in our founding. The American Revolution against British rule, followed by the [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: blacks, Declaration of Independence, men, rights, slaves, voting, women
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (12) | Home

After 61 Years, Korean War Offers Modern Lessons

June 26th, 2011

By Dan Miller As we remember our military personnel who gave their lives during the conflict, we might also think about the reasons it happened and about how to diminish the likelihood of another, in Korea and elsewhere. Sixty-one years ago, on June 25, 1950, North Korea “unexpectedly” invaded South Korea. As we remember our [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: China, DPRK, Korea, lessons, MacArthur, Mao, nuclear, Russia, Stalin, war
Categories: History, Military, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Memorial Day

May 30th, 2011

By Tom Carter Memorial Day, once called Decoration Day, is an observance that began spontaneously after the Civil War. People visited the graves of those killed in the war and left flowers in their memory. In the years that followed, it slowly became a national day of observance in honor of the fallen in all [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Memorial Day
Categories: History, Life, Military | Comments (0) | Home

Governments Rot When Their Citizens Let Them (Part I)

April 30th, 2011

By Dan Miller We get the worst government we’re prepared to tolerate. Not long ago I suggested that we might as well elect a real clown, Grumpy, to serve as president of the United States. When he ran (very successfully) for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies in 2010, Grumpy promised that, with him in office, [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Constitution, corrupt, culture, government, inept, politicians, revolution
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

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