America

10 November 1975: Daniel Patrick Moynihan addresses the UN on Zionism

Before Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) was elected as a Democratic Senator from New York in 1976, a seat he held 24 years, he served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. While Moynihan was the ambassador, the UN passed Resolution 3379, which declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” In the new book Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism, historian Gil Troy chronicles Moynihan’s fiery response to that resolution, a speech that was delivered 37 years ago today.

George McGovern

By Edward Zelinsky
On 15 November 1969, I was shivering on the Mall in Washington, D.C., surrounded by a band of self-proclaimed Maoists celebrating the prospect of a Viet Cong victory. This was the second “Moratorium” against the Vietnam War. While the first Moratorium in October had a decidedly mainstream flavor, the tone of the November event was markedly different. I was conflicted on that cold November day in Washington. I opposed the Vietnam War, as did the thousands of others standing on the Mall that day.

How to survive election season, oral history style

By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
Every presidential election, similar concerns arise: Don’t the campaign ads seem especially vicious? Has the media coverage always been this crazed? Will we ever actually get to vote? While I know many who become more motivated the more absurd the election season becomes, I tend to become disenchanted with the whole process, wondering how my one small vote could compete against the Koch Brothers or Morgan Freeman.

Birth control, marriage, and women’s sexuality

By Christina Simmons
Ninety-six years ago, on 16 October 1916, Margaret Sanger opened her first — illegal — birth control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Human efforts to control fertility are at least as old as written history; ancient Greeks and Egyptians used spermicidal and barrier methods. But Sanger’s action began a new phase. In less than two weeks police shut the clinic down, but the incident heightened the visibility of the fledgling birth control movement.

Journalistic narratives of Gerald Ford

By James L. Baughman
It has been more than 25 years since Gerald Ford narrowly lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. Ford’s presidency has become a dim memory. “The more I think about the Ford administration,” John Updike wrote in 1992, “the more it seems I remember nothing.” Taking office after Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974, Ford struggled to restore the public’s faith in the presidency, badly shaken by the numerous illegalities associated with the Nixon White House.

Presidential campaigns: replicating Reagan

By Gil Troy

Although he last ran for office nearly 30 years ago, and died 8 years ago, Ronald Reagan remains a surprisingly strong presence on today’s campaign trail. It is not just the multiple times Republican candidates’ invoked his name during the primary debates. It is not just that Americans are still debating Reagan’s cry to shrink the federal government.

Solo or duet? Married couples in the American National Biography

By Susan Ware
What are the chances, I wondered, of having separate entries for a married couple in the American National Biography Online (ANB)? I’m still new to my job as the general editor of the ANB, but it struck me as intriguing that the very first update released on my watch will contain one such couple: country music singers Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Joined together in marriage and music, they both led fascinating lives that earned them inclusion – separately — in the ANB.

Should we want a business leader in the White House?

By Andrew Polsky
During the first two presidential debates, Mitt Romney repeatedly invoked his business experience as a key qualification for the White House. He uttered phrases such as “I know how to make this economy grow” and “I know how to grow jobs” at least a half dozen times in his second debate with President Barack Obama. The notion that a business leader would bring to the presidency a uniquely useful skill set, especially in a period of sluggish economic growth, has a certain appeal.

Chauvinism and idealism in American nationalism

By Anatol Lieven
When the Bush administration launched its campaign to gather US public support for the invasion of Iraq, I was especially struck by the way in which they managed to mobilise on the one hand chauvinist nationalist hostility to the outside world in general and Muslims in particular, and on the other hand a civic nationalist belief in America’s mission to spread democracy and freedom to those same Muslims.

Reflections on the first presidential debate

By Andrew J. Polsky
As the first presidential debate recedes in the rearview mirror, we may be able to gain clearer perspective on what it means to the 2012 presidential race. For starters, the clear winner was the news media. No one likes a one-sided presidential campaign, and that was the direction of the contest over several weeks prior to the debate.

Anatol Lieven on American nationalism

On the one hand, there is the core tradition of American civic nationalism based on the universalist ‘American Creed’ of almost religious reverence for American democratic institutions and the U.S. constitution. On the other, there exists a chauvinist nationalism which holds that these institutions are underpinned by cultural values which belong only to certain Americans, and which is strongly hostile both to foreigners and to minorities in America which are felt not to share those values.

Here’s to a wet New Orleans

By Christopher Morris
In the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac, Jack Payne of Delacroix, which is a tiny fishing village in the wetlands of the Mississippi delta below New Orleans, explained to Bob Marshall of the Times-Picayune, that “Everything I rebuild will either be on pilings or wheels. It’s gotta be higher than storm surge, or something I can pull outta here. This is our future, man. We know it’s gonna happen again and again — and just get worse.”

When “Stuff happens.”

By Andrew J. Polsky
The killing of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya on 11 September 2012 serves as a vivid reminder that unexpected events often intrude on presidential elections. Sometimes these events have a significant impact on how voters view the parties and the candidates. But often the electorate shrugs off breaking news. As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously put it, “Stuff happens.”

Is America an empire?

By Timothy H. Parsons
The intense controversy that this question engenders is remarkable. On the left, critics of assertive American foreign, military, and economic policies depict these policies as aggressively immoral by branding them “imperial.” On the right, advocates for an even more forceful application of American “hard power,” such as Niall Ferguson and the other members of his self-described “neo-imperialist gang,” argue that the United States should use its immense wealth and military might to impose order and stability on an increasingly chaotic world.

Occupied by Images

By Carol Quirke
Media buzz about Occupy Wall Street’s first anniversary began by summer’s end. That colorful, disbursed social movement brought economic injustice to the center of public debate, raising questions about free-market assumptions undergirding Wall Street bravado and politicians’ pious incantations. Most watched from the sidelines, but polling had many cheering as citizens marched and camped against the corrosive consequences of an economically stacked deck.

The garbled scholarship of the American Civil War

By Donald Stoker
How can we frame a discussion? What terminologies give us a basis for common understanding? While many deplore arguing semantics, it is often essential to argue the meaning of words. Scholars aren’t immune to speaking to opposite ends when they don’t share common definitions. The American Civil War does not lack for books, but they aren’t all talking on the same terms. For example, what do we mean by “strategy”?