U.S. History

As usual, let us begin with a paradox. James McPherson, a leading historian of the Civil War, ardently supports the Union cause and views Abraham Lincoln as an outstanding champion of "positive liberalism."

Vindicating the Founders is better than I thought it would be. The author proceeds from an excellent idea. The framers have of late come under attack by leftists of various sorts.

While American "liberals" tend to view Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton as their political and philosophical idols, conservatives at the Weekly Standard magazine and elsewhere have begun touting Henry Clay as their first political icon.

In fact, the Roosevelt legacy is not individualism; it is certainly not liberty. His continuing legacy is one of unprecedented government intervention. Roosevelt crushed property rights. He constructed huge public works projects. He also helped lead the U.S. into its disastrous slide into imperialism and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in numerous foreign conflicts (and millions of foreigners). In reality, the leviathan state in all its evil owes much to TR.

The dispossession of the Indians—culminating in the late 1880s with the surviving tribes of the West being herded onto reservations—was the result of a corrupt and immoral relationship between certain Northern industrialists, particularly government-subsidized railroads, and the federal politicians whose careers they financed and promoted.

The centralized, executive state makes corruption at the top a political inevitability.

The contributors to this outstanding volume have grasped a simple but unfashionable truth: war is a great evil. 

Peter Salins, Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, has good news. Americans need no longer worry about immigration, so long as a simple and straightforward plan is adopted: all immigrants must assimilate.

Great Britain learned an important lesson from World War I. 

Jack Kemp, former HUD secretary and failed vice presidential candidate, recently proved that academic leftists aren't the only ones intolerant of politically incorrect ideas. He interrupted a luncheon speech I was giving at an academic conference by squirreling around in his seat, ostentatiously rolling his shoulders and eyes, and loudly and repeatedly moaning, "Jeez!" and "Oh Gawd!"