U.S. History

The United States has gone through at least six "party systems." Populism, war, or economic crises usually trigger a change from one system to another.

There are few sacred cows in American politics more revered than the New Deal. Yet the New Deal did nothing to end the Depression and it still negatively impacts our economy today. Now we're being told the United States needs a new New Deal.

Now is not the time to pine for the days of agreeable politics. In recent decades, the US has gone through radical political and cultural transformations that are making the country progressively ungovernable. 

Staten Island once voted 2-to-1 to leave New York City. The Manhattan overlords ignored the vote. But Staten Island would be better off as a separate city, and the same holds true for Brooklyn and Queens. 

The Boston Tea Party was an opening act in what came to be a violent culture war and war of national liberation. And it helps us understand how America in 2020 could become as bitterly divided as America during the revolution.

Tate Fegley reviews Elizabeth Hinton's book on mass incarceration, finding in it a good overview of US criminal justice from Kennedy to Reagan, but no clear, discernible thesis.

Abolishing the Electoral College is likely to worsen national conflict and disunity.

The "New Historians" can identify the ostensible economic prowess of slavery, but they have ignored the many unseen costs imposed by slave economies.

Under Truman, FDR's revolution was consolidated and advanced beyond what even Franklin Roosevelt had ever dared hope for.

Without the culture, the life, the hum, and the energy of the city, without the shopping and walks, the theater or a ball game, city life now has all of the costs and none of the comforts.