It is a deep animus that would seek to tie John Calvin (1509–1564) to the QAnon-fueled wackos who stormed the American capitol earlier this month but that is what Richard Hughes tries to do in a recent editorial in the Los Angeles . . . Continue reading →
For much of the history of North America, Christianity has been the dominant religious group and a major culture-shaping force. In the USA it, as I have noted regularly here, until quite recently people spoke of the USA as a “Christian nation” . . . Continue reading →
A hardline Communist, Davis supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and relished being a guest of Fidel Castro in Cuba — where she went immediately following her acquittal. But her greatest love was for the Soviet Union and the Eastern . . . Continue reading →
It is a deeply-held conviction among more than a few American Christians that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that it was such until relatively recently. Further, it is widely thought that if only there were a religious . . . Continue reading →
Thus to speak of America’s “founding” at all is necessarily to speak of what makes Americans a “people.” When Abraham Lincoln said that the nation was “conceived in liberty” four score and seven years before the dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery—that is, in . . . Continue reading →
The 1619 Project is a thesis in search of evidence Continue reading →
The Project as a whole was marred by similar faults. Prominent historians, most of them deeply sympathetic to the Project’s goal of bringing the African American experience more fully into our understanding of the American past, nevertheless felt obliged to point out, . . . Continue reading →
I have been reading Lester Cahill for years and and I have been listening to his podcast since it began. Lester is one of my favorite contemporary writers and thinkers because he is independent, intelligent, passionate, and challenging. I always learn something from him. In one of his recent episodes (linked in the post) Lester critiques the recent Netflix series on Madam C. J. Walker and, in another, he introduces us to the founder of an early Black American entrepreneur. Continue reading →
No effort to educate the public in order to advance social justice can afford to dispense with a respect for basic facts. In the long and continuing battle against oppression of every kind, an insistence on plain and accurate facts has been . . . Continue reading →
As well as the essay I have read your interviews with James McPherson and James Oakes. I share their sense that, putting it politely, this is a tendentious and partial reading of American history. I understand where this Project is coming from, . . . Continue reading →
So, let us speak of slavery. The American republic inherited slavery from the British empire, in much the same way that it inherited its fiscal poverty, its lack of manufacturing capability, and its primitive infrastructure. We expected to overcome all of these . . . Continue reading →