History News Network

Departments

This is where we place excerpts by historians writing about the news. On occasion this page also includes political scientists, economists, and law professors who write about history. We may from time to time even include English profs.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Why Not Give Students Both the Liberal and Conservative Views of American History?
Victor Davis Hanson: Our Reset Reset Foreign Policy
Jonathan Zimmerman: American history -- right and left
Daniel Pipes: America's Shiny New Palestinian Militia
Walter Russell Mead: Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists
Binoy Kampmark: Education in Texas is Moving Right & Going Wrong
Diane Ravitch: Texas Promotes Ignorance in its Textbook Requirements
Geoffrey Alderman: Why British University Standards Have Fallen
Michael Kazin: The History of Sarah Palin's Theology
Gillis J. Harp: Conservatives Should Not Get Too Close to Ayn Rand
Thomas Meaney and Harris Mylonas: Greece's Crisis, Germany's Gain
Diane Ravitch: The "Big Idea" -- It's Bad Education Policy
Nicolas Kinloch: What is History in Schools For?
Edmund Morris: Why Is Obama Reading My Book?
Ashley Cruseturner: Rick Perry Tamed the Tea Party
Julian Zelizer: Watching Congress Make Sausages
Diane Ravitch: Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform
Tony Platt: Remembering History's Shame
Paul V. Dutton: France Reformed Health Care in Tough Times; Why Can't We?
Joseph N. Tatarewicz: American Spaceflight's Murky Future

Jonathan Zimmerman: Why Not Give Students Both the Liberal and Conservative Views of American History?

Source: LA Times (3-17-10)

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."]

Once upon a time, Americans did some very bad things. They enslaved Africans, displaced Indians, oppressed women and exploited laborers. Then the Great American Government came to the rescue.

Spurred by protest movements for freedom and equality, the government instituted changes that brought the nation progressively closer to its founding promise.

That's the theme of most American history textbooks. And it's also what offended the Texas Board of Education, which voted last week to approve a new set of social studies standards that emphasize America's timeless virtues. The current standards, one board member explained, "are rife with leftist political periods and events: the Populists, the Progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society."

And here's what most of my fellow liberals won't admit: He's right. These bursts of reform are the spine of the story that we tell ourselves, about who we are and who we want to be. When a social problem arises, we press our elected representatives to devise new laws and institutions that will make America more compassionate, decent and fair.

That's how most liberals -- and, I should add, most historians -- see the world. Our heroes are the champions of social justice -- Frederick Douglass, Jane Addams, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and so on -- and the presidents who tried to put their ideas into practice: Abraham Lincoln, both Roosevelts, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

It's not an unalloyed embrace, mind you. Many of us have criticized these politicians for their errors, blind spots and inconsistencies. Kennedy takes a pummeling every few years for the Bay of Pigs, as does Johnson for escalating the war in Vietnam.

But even our disparagement of liberal icons demonstrates our overall adherence to the liberal script. In the great national drama, our leaders are supposed to harness the power of government to the principle of social justice. And when they don't, we take them to task.

Our scholarship about conservatism reflects a similar bias. Over the last few decades, historians have produced brilliant studies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the rise of the so-called Christian right. But most of this work proceeds from the basic assumption that the right was wrong: about religion, race, the economy and everything else.

And now -- surprise -- conservatives are fighting back. Look closely at the new Texas social studies standards and you'll find attacks on every sacred cow in the liberal pantheon, starting with the separation of church and state. While liberals often impute the principle to the Founding Fathers, the Texas standards hold that the founders imagined America as a "Christian nation."

The new standards also reject the idea of American imperialism, preferring to call it "expansionism." They insist on the superiority of America's "free enterprise system," which will replace the prior standards' reference to "capitalism." (Capitalism, one school board member explained, "does have a negative connotation. You know, 'capitalist pig.' ")

When we get to the Cold War, the new standards note that recent archival discoveries "confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in the U.S. government." And for the 1960s and beyond, the standards advise, students should examine the "unintended consequences" of Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX.

Conservatives on the Texas school board claim that these changes will simply provide "balance" to the dominant liberal paradigm. But their red-meat rhetoric says otherwise. Would these people rest easily if students -- following a "balanced" discussion -- concluded that the Great Society and affirmative action were really great ideas?

I think not. And the same goes for liberals, who would bridle if the students walked away from class believing that '60s-era reforms were failures. For the most part, Americans do not enter this arena to make the case for "balance." Instead, they want their side to win.

And that's the real back story of the tragicomedy that's unfolding in Texas. It's easy for coastal liberals to scoff at the unlettered rubes of the Lone Star State, who are obviously revising history to fit their present-day predilections. But that's what we all do, all the time, and then we foist these ideas on our kids.

What if we gave them multiple points of view instead? Recent history gives us a perfect opportunity to do precisely that. After the arch-liberal author Howard Zinn died in January, his "A People's History of the United States" shot to No. 12 on the New York Times paperback nonfiction list. Just behind -- at No. 15 -- was Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen's conservative "A Patriot's History of the United States," which received a big boost when Glenn Beck pumped it on his radio and TV shows.

So here's a modest proposal: Instead of bickering about the "correct" version of the past, the Texas school board should decree that every high school history class use both of these texts. That would teach students that Americans disagree -- vehemently -- about the making and the meaning of their nation. And it would require the kids to sort out the differences on their own.

Most of all, though, it would require adults to be more "liberal" in the dictionary sense of the word: tolerant, reasoned and open-minded. And we would all need to be willing to lose, of course, if our children decided that our version of history was wrong.

Will we let them?

Posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 10:48 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Victor Davis Hanson: Our Reset Reset Foreign Policy

Source: victorhanson.com (3-15-10)

[Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.]

Almost every element of Barack Obama's once-heralded new "reset" foreign policy of a year ago has either been reset or likely soon will be.

Consider Obama's approach to the 8-year-old war on terror. Plans made more than a year ago to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay by January 2010 have stalled. Despite loud proclamations about trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, in a civilian court in New York, such an absurd pledge will probably never be kept.

Talk of trying our own former CIA interrogators for being too tough on terrorist suspects has also come to nothing. And why not put an end to the second-guessing of anti-terrorism protocols since the Obama administration, in a single year, has quadrupled the number of assassinations by Predator drones of suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan? After all, the targeted killing of hundreds of suspects is far more questionable than waterboarding three confessed killers.

The Obama administration seems to have embraced the once widely criticized Bush-Petraeus strategy in Iraq of gradual withdrawal in concert with Iraqi benchmarks. Indeed, Vice President Joe Biden in Orwellian fashion claims that our victory in Iraq may be one of the administration's "greatest achievements." Was it not a defeatist Biden who not long ago advocated the trisection of Iraq into separate nations?

And after months of waiting, Obama finally sent more troops to Afghanistan, adopting a surge strategy that looks a lot like Bush's 2007 escalation in Iraq — this after he once assured the country that Bush's surge, in a tactical sense, "wasn't working."

Almost all of the once derided Bush anti-terrorism protocols are still in place — wiretaps, intercepts, tribunals, and renditions. And given that there were more foiled radical Islamic terrorist plots in 2009 than in any year since 2001, President Obama will probably stop his outreach speeches to the Islamic world and his serial recitations of American sins.

Our efforts to reach out and negotiate directly with Iran failed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton effectively acknowledged the impasse, citing the unexpected de facto military coup by the Revolutionary Guard. In any case, does anyone believe that more Obama speeches, videos, new diplomacy and imposed deadlines will halt an Iranian nuclear bomb?

President Obama was once a fierce critic of the former administration's Mideast policies. A year ago, he thought new outreach to the Palestinians and rebuke to the Israelis might lead to a breakthrough. It did not. In a Time magazine interview with Joe Klein, Obama confesses of the 70-year struggle: "I'll be honest with you. This is just really hard."

Obama assumed we could borrow a trillion dollars from the communist Chinese and then turn around and lecture them on Tibet, human rights, and international trade and currency — sort of like a debtor admonishing his lender about his bank's shortcomings. Now the Chinese claim that their relations with America are "seriously disrupted," as they seek to dethrone the dollar as the global currency.

I don't think there will be anymore grand deals with the Russians either, the sort that saw the United States withdraw anti-missile defense accords with Poland and the Czech Republic in hopes of halting the Iranian nuclear program. Instead, Russia and China are blocking American efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.

For all the outreach to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan strongman is still causing trouble in Latin America.

So why is the reset foreign policy being reset?..

Posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 6:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Jonathan Zimmerman: American history -- right and left

Source: LA Times (3-17-10)

Posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 6:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Daniel Pipes: America's Shiny New Palestinian Militia

Source: www.danielpipes.com (3-16-10)

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]

Shortly after Yasir Arafat died in late 2004, the U.S. government established the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator to reform, recruit, train, and equip the PA militia (called the National Security Forces or Quwwat al-Amn al-Watani) and make them politically accountable. For nearly all of its existence, the office has been headed by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton. Since 2007, American taxpayers have funded it to the tune of US$100 million a year. Many agencies of the U.S. government have been involved in the program, including the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Secret Service, and branches of the military....

Looking ahead, however, I predict that those troops will more likely be a war partner than a peace partner for Israel. Consider the troops' likely role in several scenarios:

No Palestinian state: Dayton proudly calls the U.S.-trained forces "founders of a Palestinian state," a polity he expects to come into existence by 2011. What if – as has happened often before – the Palestinian state does not emerge on schedule? Dayton himself warns of "big risks," presumably meaning that his freshly-minted troops would start directing their firepower against Israel.

Palestinian state: The PA has never wavered in its goal of eliminating Israel, as the briefest glance at documentation collected by Palestinian Media Watch makes evident. Should the PA achieve statehood, it will certainly pursue its historic goal – only now equipped with a shiny new American-trained soldiery and arsenal.

The PA defeats Hamas: For the same reason, in the unlikely event that the PA prevails over Hamas, its Gaza-based Islamist rival, it will incorporate Hamas troops into its own militia and then order the combined troops to attack Israel. The rival organizations may differ in outlook, methods, and personnel, but they share the overarching goal of eliminating Israel.

Hamas defeats the PA: Should the PA succumb to Hamas, it will absorb at least some of "Dayton's men" into its own militia and deploy them in the effort to eliminate the Jewish state.

Hamas and PA cooperate: Even as Dayton imagines he is preparing a militia to fight Hamas, the PA leadership participates in Egyptian-sponsored talks with Hamas about power sharing – raising the specter that the U.S. trained forces and Hamas will coordinate attacks on Israel.

The law of unintended consequences provides one temporary consolation: As Washington sponsors the PA forces and Tehran sponsors those of Hamas, Palestinian forces are more ideologically riven, perhaps weakening their overall ability to damage Israel....

The Dayton mission needs to be stopped before it does more harm. Congress should immediately cut all funding for the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator.

Posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Walter Russell Mead: Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists

Source: American Interest (blog) (3-16-10)

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.]

Last week the Israelis handed the Obama administration an important advantage in the continuing struggle between the US and Israel over policy towards the Palestinians. By announcing a decision to move forward with 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem, the Israelis embarrassed the administration in a way that created problems for Prime Minister Netanyahu and gave Washington an opportunity to push back. But by going public with a set of tough demands without securing its domestic support, the Obama administration may lose the advantage it gained.

With Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu scheduled to address AIPAC’s annual meeting next weekend in Washington, the stage is set for high drama. The greatest danger at this point is that one or both sides may misjudge the state of American public opinion. Israel’s political support in the United States is ultimately based much less in the highly visible network of organizations like AIPAC than it is in the strong support for Israel well beyond the Beltway. I’ve been writing a series of posts over the last week about this; it is the gentile supporters of Israel, not American Jews, who ultimately define the boundaries of American foreign policy on this issue, and the Obama administration’s ability to put pressure on its most important Middle Eastern ally ultimately depends on the reaction of American gentile supporters of Israel to administration policy. The administration may be in danger of overestimating its support in a drawn out debate.

The politics of American support for Israel can be hard to read. For the last generation, Israel has been losing popularity and support among some groups of Americans. The shift in sentiment is particularly notable among Democrats, among some of the more liberal mainline churches, among African-Americans and among people with graduate and professional degrees.

Despite these losses, overall public support for Israel in the United States has been rising, not falling, for most of the last generation. 9/11, which galvanized many American liberals to think harder than ever about the desirability of distancing the United States from Israel, immeasurably deepened the determination of a large number of their fellow citizens to stand by Israel no matter what. Just as Israel was seen as America’s most reliable and important Middle Eastern ally during the Cold War by these people, it now looked like a country whose survival depended on the defeat of America’s enemies in the war on terror. That today Israel is engaged in a confrontation with Iran, a country which poll after poll shows that Americans think of as their most dangerous adversary, only deepens this bond.

During most of the twentieth century, politically active American gentile supporters of Zionism were most visible on the left. Solidarity with Jews, the desire to offer Jews a refuge while keeping them out of the United States, a generalized concern for the rights and security of minority groups, and the traditional liberal sympathy towards Jews based on common attitudes toward historic forms of illiberal European oppression were all factors.

Liberal Zionism peaked in many ways during the Truman administration. The Communist Party, which still enjoyed some moral prestige and organizational strength in parts of the left, obediently fell in line with Stalin’s support for the Zionist objectives in Palestine. African-Americans, whose sympathy for European Jews had grown during the imposition of Nazi discrimination similar to Jim Crow laws in the United States, forged an alliance with American Jews based on common support for the growing civil rights movement. The UN’s endorsement of the Partition of Palestine in 1947, accepted by Palestinian Jews and rejected by the Arabs, led many supporters of the UN to support the Jewish position on Partition so that the UN’s first high profile international decision would not fall flat.

During the era of liberal Zionism, the State of Israel–weak and poor, secular and socialist–was seen as a client rather than a strategic asset or ally. While many conservative Protestants in the United States supported the return of the Jews to the Holy Land on both humanitarian and religious grounds (and perhaps in some cases also in gratitude that those destitute Jews were not coming to the United States), conservative political activism at this time was much more focused on the domestic and international fight against communism. Socialist Israel, whose independence had been supported by Stalin at the UN, was not seen as part of this fight.

Since 1967, liberal gentile Zionism has been on the wane both in the United States and in Europe. Israeli politics have moved to the right. Moreover the aggressive rise of religious parties, the settlement movement, and the drift in Israel away from the ‘European’ norms of the state’s early years to a more ‘eastern’ culture and political system (as Jews of Middle Eastern and ex-Soviet origin have gained demographic and political power) make Israel less attractive to the western left. Additionally, as Israel’s regional position shifted from embattled refuge to occupying power, it seemed equally less necessary and less moral among liberals to support the Jewish state. In the years since 1967 the western left has also reflected more deeply on the shortcomings of past western treatment of other parts of the world, including the Middle East. The Arab argument that Israel was a colonial imposition like French Algeria or white South Africa gained plausibility with many people.

As a result, in both Europe and the United States, liberal gentile Zionism has been slowly fading away. In the United States, this process not only moved more slowly than in Europe, it was countered by something else which, until recently, was almost unknown in the old world: rising populist support for the Jewish state on the right. I think we will see more of this in the future in Europe, where pro-Israel sentiment is likely to appeal to movements and people who fear and resent the impact in Europe of immigration from the Middle East. For now, though, this is mostly an American phenomenon.

In America, the strong upsurge in Jacksonian Zionism begins with the same event and same changes that contributed to the decline of liberal Zionism. Israel’s victory in the Six Day War electrified populist nationalists in the United States...

Posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Binoy Kampmark: Education in Texas is Moving Right & Going Wrong

Source: Scoop.co.nz (3-15-10)

[Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he earned his PhD in Modern History. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.]

Censors, it has been said, are paid to have dirty minds. Education panellists, at least in certain jurisdictions, are paid to prevent the exercise of one at all. For that reason, fifteen unknown individuals in a state should not be vested with the power to centrally control what is read or taught in texbooks. But that is certainly not the case in Texas, where educational expertise is less prized than political expediency in the coverage of such subjects as history and economics. The Texas Board of Education members have endorsed a draft proposal on the state’s social studies curriculum that is a miracle in not only being long but patchy. The [Republican] faction was glowing with triumph after the vote.

These events will hardly come as any surprise to the student of Texan curricula. Each curriculum reform tends to return to basic, patriotic principles in Texas. ‘American, and especially Texan, history is glorified,’ claimed a 2006 study from the Fordham Institute’s review of Texas’ existing history standards. Jim Crow’s legacy and the KKK are not so much condemned as wholly ignored. The history makers that matter are corporate giants who represented the best type of capitalism. History is made by robber barons rather than the sweat of the ‘common’ folk. The Texan class room is evidently no place for the pedagogical techniques of Howard Zinn....

One wonders whether the board has simply missed the point to this whole, rather silly exercise. Irrespective of what subject matter, erroneous, contentious, or otherwise is fixed in such a curriculum, fundamental matters such as literacy and lack of resources in teaching remain. Texas remains a considerable offender in that regard, with a functional literacy level of 19 percent. This is compounded by a considerable number of undocumented immigrants, mainly Hispanic, whose role in Texan history, like those of other minorities, has been airbrushed in this curriculum. Whether any of these considerations will be addressed by the time the final vote takes place in May is unlikely. Illiteracy, and a considerable degree of ignorance, is set to flourish.

Posted on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 4:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Diane Ravitch: Texas Promotes Ignorance in its Textbook Requirements

Source: The Daily Beast (3-14-10)

[Diane Ravitch is the author, most recently, of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic).]

Here is a newsflash from Texas: The conservative majority of the Texas State Board of Education adopted new guidelines for social-studies textbooks that reflect their conservative political views. The new guidelines will emphasize the Christian beliefs of the Founding Fathers. Students in Texas will be expected to learn about the emergence of the conservative movement in the 1980s and 1990s. The new textbooks are supposed to promote patriotism and respect for the “free-enterprise system.”

No surprise here. For many years, the Texas state board has been telling textbook publishers what should appear in the books that the state will buy for its students. Nineteen other states decide which textbooks will qualify for “adoption” in their public schools. Books that are not approved by the state board cannot be purchased with state funds. This is a very powerful lever to bring about revisions in the textbooks. The two most consequential of the so-called adoption states are Texas and California, because they have the largest number of students and therefore the most clout with publishers. When Texas or California speak, publishers listen and change their textbooks to comply....

In 2003, I described the absurdities of the textbook adoption process in a book titled The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Children Learn. I showed how all sorts of groups from different ends of the political spectrum have used the textbook adoptions to impose their agenda. Feminists went before state boards to demand the excision of all words, phrases, and images that were offensive to them; consequently, textbook publishers gathered long lists of words that were banned from textbooks (and tests, as well). Thus, children are spared ever having to see the word “actress” or “landlady” or “cowboy,” and they will never see a picture of a mom baking cookies.

For many years, the Texas board was swayed by conservative groups that insisted that words and phrases must be deleted from reading textbooks if they contained anything that criticized their idea of family values. They fought to remove stories about witchcraft, fantasy, disobedient children, permissive child rearing, as well as anything that criticized the nation and its laws. Any stories in which bad behavior went unpunished were excised. Guidelines in California and elsewhere discouraged the representation of poverty in poor nations, or a photograph of a cow that displayed her udders (too sexual), or references to birthday cake or hot dogs (not nutritious). Images that showed old people looking old or infirm or needing a cane or a walker were forbidden, on grounds that they were stereotypical. No, old people must be portrayed as fit and vigorous, preferably running a marathon or climbing a ladder to nail down a few loose roof tiles....

I concluded that the adoption process would always be politicized and that there was no way to improve it. I concluded that it should be abolished. It makes no sense to have an elected or appointed school board deciding which facts belong in history textbooks and which scientific ideas are valid. They do not have the qualifications to do this and they should not have the power to do it. No matter how many experts they call upon, this is a foolish way to revise textbooks....

Having a public agency decide which textbooks are right and what facts should be added or deleted is nonsensical. It is equivalent to having a public agency review movies and tell us which we will be allowed to see at taxpayer expense. Those who don’t agree with the ratings can see whatever they want, but on their own dime....

The major textbook companies rejected my idea because they are accustomed to the existing system. They dominate the existing marketplace. They don’t want a free market, where they would have to compete with dozens of other book publishers.

The only losers are the current generation of students, who will be treated to sanitized and inaccurate history textbooks. And our society, which will have another generation of citizens who were never taught to consider different points of view about issues.

Posted on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 4:06 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Geoffrey Alderman: Why British University Standards Have Fallen

Source: Guardian (UK) (3-15-10)

[Geoffrey Alderman is currently Michael Gross professor of politics & contemporary history at the University of Buckingham.]

...I believe that there has been a decline in academic standards overall in British higher education over the past two decades, but not for the reasons advanced by the AGR. The evidence for this decline is contained in the 2009 report, Students and Universities, of the then select committee on innovation, universities, science and skills. In my written and oral evidence to this inquiry, I identified the following factors as fundamental to this decline:

First, the league table culture that has permeated the senior leaderships of many British universities, resulting in intolerable pressures on academic staff to pass students who should rightfully fail and to award higher classes of degrees to the undeserving.

Second, pressures to maximise non-governmental sources of income, primarily from "full fee-paying" non-European students, to whom it is deemed prudent by these same senior leaderships to award qualifications to which they are often not entitled, so as to ensure future "market share".

Third, the increasing and increasingly stupid use of students' course evaluations as pivotal factors in the academic promotion process. To put it bluntly, a conscientious academic with poor student evaluations may find it difficult or even impossible to obtain promotion because her/his students do not like getting the low grades they may well richly deserve.

Fourth, the breakdown of the external examiner system, due partly to the near-universal modularisation of degree programmes and partly to the abysmal remuneration for work of this sort. The evidence given to the select committee of improper pressure on external examiners makes exceedingly grim reading.

Fifth, the relative leniency shown towards academic dishonesty, coupled with the tendency of university administrators to insist that plagiarism be viewed through the prism of what I believe is termed "cultural relativism".

So, let me be quite clear: I do not believe that "more" necessarily means "worse". But I do believe that more has come to mean worse because of the toxic combination of factors I have listed above, and which are obviously interrelated....

Posted on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 1:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Michael Kazin: The History of Sarah Palin's Theology

Source: Democracy : A Journal of Ideas (3-15-10)

[Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is co-editor of Dissent. He is the author, most recently, of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan and editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History.]

Going Rogue: An American Life By Sarah Palin • HarperCollins • 2009 • 413 pages • $28.99

The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down A Rising Star By Matthew Continetti • Sentinel • 2009 • 226 pages • $25.95

I will never forget the first picture I saw of Sarah Palin. There she was on the cover of Vogue, in early 2008–the "Governor Issue," no less. Her long, thick hair streamed wildly around her head, her well-toned body pressed against her sleeveless dress. That beauty-queen smile lit up her face. It turned out the cover was a fake, an Internet hoax; the hair, the body, and the dress were all photo-shopped by an anti-Palin website that wanted to make her look as un-gubernatorial as possible.

But that smile was certainly real. It is the smile of a woman who knows she has been saved and hopes you are, or soon will be, too. "I thanked our Lord for every single thing we’d been through," she writes in Going Rogue about the year that began when John McCain chose her to run for vice president. "I believed there was purpose in it all." The most important thing to know about the most popular conservative in America may be that, as a teenager, she vowed "to put my life in my Creator’s hands" and has never doubted that he is guiding her down "my life’s path."...

In his strident defense of Palin’s character and ideology–more a pamphlet or super-extended blog post than an actual book–Matthew Continetti, an editor at The Weekly Standard, accuses that all-purpose villain, the "liberal media," of tarring Palin as a theocratic bigot. He maintains his heroine is a tolerant believer who always "separate[s] personal opinion from public practice." Why, he asks, did reporters not grill Joe Biden, a Catholic, about the Virgin Birth or transubstantiation? But Biden, like most liberal Catholics, has never worn his faith on his well-tailored sleeve. If a politician claims that God stands behind every major decision she makes, and some minor ones as well, it is logical to inquire what her "opinions" (to use Continetti’s mundane term) are and how they shape her politics....

Gillis J. Harp: Conservatives Should Not Get Too Close to Ayn Rand

Source: NewsBlaze.com (3-15-10)

[Dr. Gillis J. Harp is professor of history at Grove City College and member of the faith & politics working group with The Center for Vision & Values.]

Prior to the 1990s, few scholarly studies of post-World War II American conservatism were published. Happily, this situation has changed in recent years. Much solid academic work has appeared which takes conservative thought seriously and attempts to explain its historical and cultural context. Jennifer Burns' new biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, is a welcome contribution to this growing body of literature. Burns has produced a thoroughly researched and critical (but fair) study of one of the conservative movement's most influential and colorful thinkers....

Hoping to work on a possible Broadway production of one of her plays, Rand and her husband moved to New York in November 1934. The city's frantic pace and intellectual life suited Rand better. During these early years in New York, Rand published her first book, *We The Living* (1936), which drew upon her experience in Leninist Russia. The hostile reaction to the book by many of New York's left-leaning intelligentsia convinced Rand that all was not well with American culture. Rand concluded that the rot of collectivism was infecting the home of rugged individualism. Though she voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, Rand soon became a harsh critic of the New Deal. She was introduced to the turbulent world of partisan politics by contributing to the Wendell Wilkie campaign of 1940.

In 1941, Rand wrote the booklet, "Manifesto of Individualism." Yet, it was her two published novels, *The Fountainhead* (1943), and *Atlas Shrugged*(1957), that catapulted Rand into celebrity. The first eventually became a best-seller and won favorable reviews even from critics not fond of Rand's philosophy. The second, though it sold well, was less fortunate; it was dismissed by many as heavy-handed and patently ideologically-driven....

Conservatives with Christian convictions may be inclined to dismiss Rand's personal story as a weird aberration, while cherry-picking those bits of her philosophy they find attractive (eschewing, of course, her obnoxious atheism). That would be a mistake. Rand's objectivism is of one piece and Burns's biography is in part a sobering cautionary tale for conservatives. The narrative offers at least three timely lessons worth noting:

One involves Rand's radical individualism. Americans have a well-earned reputation for being fiercely individualistic, but Rand's system is based upon a hyper-individualism developed to its logical (often absurd) conclusion. Burns includes a chilling account of how the young Rand wrote admiringly about a brutal, unrepentant serial killer named William Hickman, praising his uncompromising independence and bold willingness to flout societal norms. "What the tabloids saw as psychopathic, Rand admired," Burns comments (*Goddess*, 25)....

Second, Rand and her circle consistently demonized the state as the principal source of evil in the world. Such a caricature has been alien to Christian political theology from Thomas Aquinas, to Richard Hooker, to Leo XIII and Reinhold Niebuhr. Rand's anti-government stance can lead to troubling contradictions in a representative democracy, and Burns notes how Rand often slipped into an arrogant elitism. The rational faculty she increasingly emphasized in her thought was best exhibited by "the better species, the Superman," and not by that group of mindless citizens she dismissed as mere "human ballast" (Goddess, 114, 326, note # 7)....

Third, her elitism was connected to a myopic dogmatism that would have warmed the heart of any Stalinist. Sadly, some conservatives have occasionally exhibited some of the same unattractive characteristics of their opponents....

During the spring and summer of 2009, a few Tea Party protestors showed up at demonstrations with placards inscribed with the question: "Who is John Galt?" The reference was to a character in Atlas Shrugged who personifies the rugged individualist battling organizational conformity and statism. Jennifer Burns' insightful biography clarifies that Christian conservatives should be deeply suspicious of any movement that celebrates Ayn Rand's "superman."

Posted on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thomas Meaney and Harris Mylonas: Greece's Crisis, Germany's Gain

Source: LA Times (3-15-10)

[Thomas Meaney is a doctoral candidate in modern history at Columbia University. Harris Mylonas is an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.]

Why did it take four months for Europe's parent nations -- Germany and France -- to prop up the continent's prodigal son, Greece? And what can the European Union do when it comes to coping with such behavior with its other children?

There is little doubt Greece needs to face up to the part it played in its current financial mess -- in which its ballooning deficit threatened the stability of the nation and the euro. But it now appears that in the case of Germany, at least, the slow response was more than meets the eye. Chancellor Angela Merkel was not simply pandering to her fragile coalition and frustrated electorate. Instead, the Greek crisis turned into a three-part opportunity for Germany: The country has dramatically boosted its exports thanks to a weak euro, a German is now the front-runner to head the European Central Bank, and it can now justify cracking the whip on the rest of the Eurozone -- the group of nations that use the euro.

As Europe's biggest exporter, Germany has been hamstrung by a weak dollar and even weaker Chinese yuan. The devaluation of the euro relative to the dollar in the last three months by more than 10% has helped German exports recover from a devastating 19% drop in 2009. While Germany has traditionally been committed to a strong currency, Merkel has been content to let the export sector of the German economy benefit temporarily from the crisis. Call it the Greek stimulus. The old economic tanker is skillfully navigating its course....

One thing remains clear. The parents of the Eurozone want to solve Greece's problem without resorting to the direct -- and embarrassing -- involvement of the International Monetary Fund. In recent years, new EU member states such as Hungary and Latvia turned to the IMF when they needed assistance. But Greece is too close to home. Germany and Greece share the same currency and cannot risk its credibility in the long run.

What hasn't yet shattered the EU just might make it stronger.

Posted on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 11:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Diane Ravitch: The "Big Idea" -- It's Bad Education Policy

Source: LA Times (3-14-10)

[Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."]

There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea -- a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools. The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.

Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.

As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done....

Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better....

The Obama education reform plan is an aggressive version of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind, under which many schools have narrowed their curriculum to the tested subjects of reading and math. This poor substitute for a well-rounded education, which includes subjects such as the arts, history, geography, civics, science and foreign language, hits low-income children the hardest, since they are the most likely to attend the kind of "failing school" that drills kids relentlessly on the basics. Emphasis on test scores already compels teachers to focus on test preparation. Holding teachers personally and exclusively accountable for test scores -- a key feature of Race to the Top -- will make this situation even worse. Test scores will determine salary, tenure, bonuses and sanctions, as teachers and schools compete with each other, survival-of-the-fittest style....

Having embraced the Republican agenda of choice, competition and accountability, the Obama administration is promoting the privatization of large segments of American education and undermining the profession of teaching. This toxic combination is the latest Big Idea in education reform. Like so many of its predecessors, it is not likely to improve education.

Posted on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Nicolas Kinloch: What is History in Schools For?

Source: BBC History Magazine (3-11-10)

[Nicolas Kinloch teaches history at the Netherhall School & Sixth Form College, Cambridge.]

Let’s come straight to the point. What is history in schools for? I ask because the answer, though currently widely debated, seems to be far from obvious to our rulers, or even to some who teach the subject. I’m not wholly surprised: I myself don’t believe most of the reasons that are usually produced.

A firm favourite with government at the moment is the idea of ‘identity’ or – if you want to be really multicultural and daring – ‘identities’. In this view, an essentially fissiparous society is held together by allowing every group to see where it ‘fits’ into the overall narrative. Possibly: though it seems to me that this is at least as likely to focus pupils on what divides them, rather than what unites them.

It wouldn’t be the first example of well-meant policies resulting in the opposite of what was intended. Years of studying Nazism haven’t necessarily resulted in any great conversion to the need for mutual tolerance and understanding. As successive ambassadors from the Federal Republic have complained, a consequence for some pupils has instead been the legitimising of anti-German sentiment. This is what happens when history and citizenship get confused....

The real problem, it seems to me, is that education has lost its direction. We once took it for granted that everyone ought to know some history, just as they ought to know some science, or be able to read, write or manipulate numbers. It wasn’t that it was ‘useful’, or contributed directly to the gross domestic product. It was simply one of the distinguishing characteristics of a civilised human being.

Nowadays most educational leaders are terrified of this sort of value judgement, if they understand it at all. They know all about the latest educational fad; they know all about ‘managing’ [by which they mean skewing] data; they’re expert at pretending that all will be well once the next expensive initiative has been implemented. But you try asking them what it’s all for.

Posted on Friday, March 12, 2010 at 1:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Edmund Morris: Why Is Obama Reading My Book?

Source: The Daily Beast (3-9-10)

[Edmund Morris is the author of biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Beethoven. This fall he will publish the third volume of his Roosevelt trilogy.]

An author’s first reaction to the news that the president of the United States is reading one of his books is, naturally enough, admiration for the man’s superb taste in prose. Then come qualms. What if he gets bored and badmouths it on Jay Leno? What if he is seen using the paperback edition to swat horseflies at Camp David?

“I’m reading a biography of Teddy Roosevelt right now,” Obama said yesterday in Pennsylvania. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed tout de tweet that it’s my The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Well, that’s nice, but the president can’t have gotten very far into it, because right there in the prologue it says how TR detested being called “Teddy.” Maybe a blob of cigarette ash obscured that particular sentence.

Apparently, the 44th president admires the 26th because TR was an early apostle of health-care reform—not to mention draconian regulation of banks and interstate corporations, inheritance taxes, and protection of the environment by executive order. These things are a matter of record, although TR’s progressivism was actually much more radical after he left the presidency in 1909. He didn’t call for national health insurance until he ran for a third White House term in the famous Bull Moose campaign of 1912. His platform was so radical that many of its proposals were not enacted until the New Deal administration of his fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And even FDR couldn’t push the medical plank through, for fear of endangering Social Security....

George H.W. Bush thought enough of TR to ask David McCullough (another Roosevelt biographer) to come to the White House and lecture on him. In 1994, Bill Clinton went through a tree-hugging “Teddy” phase so ardent it was a wonder he didn’t start wearing pince-nez. Then there was “W,” who worshipfully admitted that he modeled himself on the Rough Rider. Whenever he did that, it reminded me of the New Yorker cartoon of a professorial type saying to a much younger man, “Just because I was your favorite teacher doesn’t make you my favorite student.”...

I’m flattered that Obama is reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, instead of those fascinating 15,000-page bills Congress keeps sending him. But I’d respectfully suggest that he will learn more about the Rooseveltian executive style in the book’s sequel, Theodore Rex. Perhaps just the opening chapters, Mr. President, describing TR’s first year (1901-1902) in office? They show how, in swift but carefully timed succession, TR—a consummate manipulator of the press—dramatized and identified himself with the major issues of his day: racial prejudice, antitrust power, reclamation policy, Supreme Court reactionism, labor/management strife, and so on. Some of the details are dated now, but what is dateless and of particular relevance to Obama is TR’s karate-chop style. He chose the issue, chose the moment, then struck with all his might. Having struck, he went on to other things, leaving the legislative and the judiciary and a wildly excited press to debate, and maybe push through, the reforms he sought....

Posted on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 7:11 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Ashley Cruseturner: Rick Perry Tamed the Tea Party

Source: InsiderIowa (3-10-10)

[Ashley Cruseturner teaches American history at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas.]

Last week in Texas, Rick Perry registered a definitive triumph in the Republican gubernatorial primary, capturing 51 percent of the vote in a fiercely contested three-person race. His comfortable victory offers a unique window into the upheaval currently roiling American politics.

When Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison decided back in 2008 to challenge Rick Perry for the governorship, she emerged as the favorite to unseat an incumbent who, seemingly, had overstayed his welcome and appeared vulnerable. The senator, poised, proven, and enormously popular, confidently entered the contest on an intimidating winning streak—unbeaten in five statewide races dating back to 1990.

Throughout much of 2008 and 2009, “Kay,” as she is affectionately known all over Texas, consistently out-polled the purportedly dull-witted and unprincipled “Governor Goodhair.” By the close of the contest, every major Texas daily and a whole host of Lone Star heavyweights (including President Bush-41, Barbara Bush, Dick Cheney, and Nolan Ryan) endorsed the challenger to no avail. When the voters finally cast their ballots, Senator Hutchison found herself not only in second place but twenty percentage points off the leader....

Did the Tea Party movement resurrect Perry?

Yes and No. In reality, the race featured a bona fide Tea Party candidate, Debra Medina, who persistently excoriated the incumbent governor as a pseudo-conservative—unreliable on state sovereignty and hopelessly addicted to high taxes, big spending, and politics as usual. Attractive, articulate, and an accomplished woman in her late forties, Medina struck many observers as a stouter version of Sarah Palin....

But, alas, March 2, Texas Primary Day 2010, arrived as an anticlimax: Hutchison, 30.3; Medina, 18.5; Perry 51 percent.

What happened to the Tea Party challenge?

In the end, Medina’s meteoric rise in the primary led to national recognition, which, ironically, derailed her upstart campaign with corresponding swiftness. During a fatal February interview with Glenn Beck, Medina bizarrely refused to repudiate the “9/11 Truther” paranoia. In one excruciating moment, the anti-establishment insurgent came away mortally punctured and careening wildly out of control—her campaign for mainstream Republican voters in Texas effectively dead....

Why did Perry win?

The most persuasive answer in this case happens to be the simplest. Texas dramatically emerged an island of stability in a tumultuous sea of uncertainty. Rick Perry happily ran for reelection as governor of arguably the most prosperous and fiscally responsible state in the Union and positioned himself as the embodiment of responsible, conservative, business-friendly government.

Detractors will argue that the Governor takes too much credit for the miraculous Texas prosperity—but that is how the game works. In fairness, his opponents would have merrily castigated him for mismanagement, if the economic fortunes of the Lone Star State had fallen into distress during his watch....

Posted on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 12:14 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Julian Zelizer: Watching Congress Make Sausages

Source: Politico (3-10-10)

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security — From World War II to the War on Terrorism” (Basic Books, 2010).]

All eyes are on Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She must persuade House Democrats to vote for the Senate health care bill with no changes. They must take it on faith that the upper chamber will add sought-after provisions using reconciliation. If Pelosi cannot make a deal, health care reform will fail.

To unite Democrats, most observers expect that Pelosi will have to cut deals the old-fashioned way — using pork. Critics warn that this could undermine support for reform — and for Pelosi. Indeed, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rushed through a series of agreements that included exempting Nebraska from paying Medicaid increases (for Sen. Ben Nelson) and giving $300 million in Medicaid funding to Louisiana (for Sen. Mary Landrieu), Republicans lambasted them as the “Cornhusker Kickback” and the “Louisiana Purchase.”...

In 1957, for example, Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson ushered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through the Senate. The first major civil rights bill since Reconstruction, the measure strengthened federal voting rights protections. Most important, it laid the groundwork for bolder legislation in the 1960s. “Once you break the virginity,” Johnson predicted, “it’ll be easier next time.”...

To overcome...challenges, Johnson persuaded a group of western Democrats to support a watered-down compromise that some Southerners were willing to live with (by not filibustering). In exchange, Johnson corralled Southern votes for the construction of a federal dam in Hells Canyon, between Idaho and Oregon. With this deal in place, the bill passed....

Legislators need pork to make things happen, especially in an age when chronic obstruction has so weakened the legislative process that policy breakthroughs are almost impossible. This does not excuse all kinds of deal making, nor should we ignore that deals sometimes go too far.

But we must also acknowledge that legislative coalitions are extraordinarily difficult to achieve. It is unrealistic to expect that legislative leaders won’t use one of the few tools at their disposal to get things done.

In the coming days, Pelosi might well use this tool if she wants to bring the health care negotiations to a successful conclusion.

Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 5:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Diane Ravitch: Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform

Source: WSJ (3-9-10)

[Ms. Ravitch is author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education," published last week by Basic Books.]

I have been a historian of American education since 1975, when I received my doctorate from Columbia. I have written histories, and I've also written extensively about the need to improve students' knowledge of history, literature, geography, science, civics and foreign languages. So in 1991, when Lamar Alexander and David Kearns invited me to become assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush, I jumped at the chance with the hope that I might promote voluntary state and national standards in these subjects.

By the time I left government service in January 1993, I was an advocate not only for standards but for school choice. I had come to believe that standards and choice could co-exist as they do in the private sector. With my friends Chester Finn Jr. and Joseph Viteritti, I wrote and edited books and articles making the case for charter schools and accountability....

As No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) accountability regime took over the nation's schools under President George W. Bush and more and more charter schools were launched, I supported these initiatives. But over time, I became disillusioned with the strategies that once seemed so promising. I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for....

Since the law permitted every state to define "proficiency" as it chose, many states announced impressive gains. But the states' claims of startling improvement were contradicted by the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Eighth grade students improved not at all on the federal test of reading even though they had been tested annually by their states in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007....

In short, accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools, producing graduates who were drilled regularly on the basic skills but were often ignorant about almost everything else. Colleges continued to complain about the poor preparation of entering students, who not only had meager knowledge of the world but still required remediation in basic skills. This was not my vision of good education....

The current emphasis on accountability has created a punitive atmosphere in the schools. The Obama administration seems to think that schools will improve if we fire teachers and close schools. They do not recognize that schools are often the anchor of their communities, representing values, traditions and ideals that have persevered across decades. They also fail to recognize that the best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers.

What we need is not a marketplace, but a coherent curriculum that prepares all students. And our government should commit to providing a good school in every neighborhood in the nation, just as we strive to provide a good fire company in every community....

Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tony Platt: Remembering History's Shame

Source: Tony Platt at GoodToGo (Blog) (3-10-10)

[I'm recently retired from some 40 years of full-time teaching American history, public policy, and social sciences at University of Chicago (1966-1968), Berkeley (1968-1977), and California State University, Sacramento (1977-2007). I completed an undergraduate degree at Oxford University (1960-1963) and received my doctorate from Berkeley in 1966.]

While on a trip to the east coast from my home in Berkeley I get the news that yet another Native American site on California's northwest coast has been vandalized.

Between the 1780s - when Thomas Jefferson dug up a huge cemetery containing a thousand human remains - and the 1970s, when the Red Power movement began to put amateur and professional archaeologists on the defensive, the discovery and excavation of native skeletons was promoted as good sport, entrepreneurial initiative, and sound science. Minimally 600,000, and maybe as many as one million, graves were excavated. Millions of artifacts from graves ended up in museums, private collections, and cabinets of curiosities, while body parts were sent to universities for scientific analysis.

The looting of graves and illegal trading in native artifacts for profit continue, despite an array of local, state, and federal laws. Of twenty-four people currently under indictment in Utah for trading in artifacts worth millions of dollars, two have committed suicide, as has the federal government's key witness, Ted Gardiner, who told his son about the time "diggers dug up a human skull and just tossed it aside. He saw a lot of things that disgusted him." On the coast of northern California, where I spend a great deal of time, small-fry looters regularly track down and dig up Yurok, Tolowa, and Wiyot sites, hoping to strike it rich.

The legacy of two centuries of grave looting is a deep sense of resentment among Native American organizations that has only been slightly alleviated by the efforts of universities, museums, and government during the last twenty years to account for and, in some cases, repatriate human remains and funerary artifacts. The U. S. Senate's recent apology for "ill-conceived policies" and Obama's face-to-face meeting with representatives of the country's 564 federally recognized tribes - "I get it, I'm on your side," said the president - is a good beginning at reconciliation.

Paul V. Dutton: France Reformed Health Care in Tough Times; Why Can't We?

Source: Arizona Daily Sun (3-10-10)

[Paul V. Dutton is executive director of the Interdisciplinary Health Policy Institute and professor of European history at Northern Arizona University. He is author of "Differential Diagnoses: A Comparative History of Health Care Problems and Solutions in the United States and France" (Cornell, 2007) and "Origins of the French Welfare State" (Cambridge, 2002).]

...Let's take France, whose health care ideals are probably most similar to our own. The French share Americans' disdain for any restrictions on patient choice of providers; they won't stand for waiting lists like the British and Canadians; they see almost exclusively private-practice physicians for ambulatory care; and they want everything their doctor prescribes covered by their insurance, including multi-day hot springs visits. In short, the French have never stood idle if their government threatened to come between them and their doctors.

So how, then, did a centrist French government in 1930 succeed at passing health care reform during the Great Depression with proto-fascists and communists sniping respectively from the right and the left?

First, doctors were key. France's doctors were politically powerful and could have stopped reform dead in its tracks, as the AMA did in the US of the 1930s. The difference: French reformers purposefully rallied doctors to the reform bill by bolstering physicians' power over medical decision-making, protecting everyone from the vagaries of insurance. People loved it....

What about insurers? France's first major legislation of 1930 stood on a grand bargain with France's private health insurers. They dropped their opposition to government-mandated insurance for industrial workers because the reform cast private insurers as the main vehicles though which premiums would flow. What we today call a "public option" was only necessary in regions where private insurers proved insufficient. From the French point of view, the Senate healthcare reform bill follows a well-trod historical path.

It's also critical to understand that France's healthcare system did not have a Big Bang. Instead, several governments led by different parties added to its depth and scope. In the mid-1930s, a socialist-led government brought farmers and agricultural workers into the system. After the Second World War in 1945 a center-right leader, Charles de Gaulle, spearheaded the creation of a large public insurer, Securite Sociale, resulting in what we would recognize as a Medicare-for-all system. Yet de Gaulle also went out of his way to assure the financial health of a competitive private health insurance industry, which today covers the French citizenry against risks and co-payments that are not covered by Securite Sociale. The self-employed joined the system in the 1960s. But not until 2000 did France achieve universal coverage. The lesson here is that we have a long road ahead of us, and that a mixed public-private system is what will please most of the people most of the time.

France's health care system is widely popular and was ranked as the best in the world by the World Health Organization in 2001 because of its universal coverage, responsive healthcare providers, patient and provider freedoms, and the health and longevity of the country's population. The United States ranked 37th. A more recent 2008 Commonwealth Fund study looked at how well healthcare in the world's 19 leading industrialized nations helped their citizens avoid death from maladies that shouldn't kill them, e.g., hypertension, appendicitis, cervical and colon cancers. Again, France came in first. The United States ranked 19th....

Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Joseph N. Tatarewicz: American Spaceflight's Murky Future

Source: Baltimore Sun (3-10-10)

[Joseph N. Tatarewicz is associate professor of history at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and director of the Human Context of Science & Technology Program. His e-mail is tatarewicz@umbc.edu.]

For the first time, a U.S. president has canceled the main future human spaceflight program, leaving NASA without a direction, soon without a vehicle to fly people in space, and with its role as world space leader in doubt.

How did we get into this predicament, and is there a path toward regaining the kind of space eminence Americans have taken for granted?...

The shock of the Soviets' first satellite, Sputnik goaded a reluctant President Dwight Eisenhower into establishing a small civilian space program. With the Cold War in full swing, President John F. Kennedy established the moon landing as a way to compete safely with the Soviets and grew the fledgling NASA into a huge and well-funded enterprise.

This rising tide carried a number of other boats with it, and satellites and space probes multiplied and became more sophisticated. However, the human spaceflight program always dominated the NASA budget, itself a tiny percentage of the national budget....

President Barack Obama, despite canceling the future human spaceflight program, has proposed increasing NASA's budget and has promised (without revealing the details) a new and exciting program.

Presidents have always used space as an instrument for their broader programs and agendas, but usually without much public debate or even notice. This is different. The old, well-worn paradigms and plans are probably off the table, but the new ones are just emerging, in piecemeal fashion....

Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Home Newsletter Submissions Advertising Donations Archives Internships About Us FAQs Contact Us All Articles