Lerone Martin is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Chair and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. This interview is based on his new book, The...
Andrea McDowell is Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law. This interview is based on her new book, We the Miners: Self-Government in the California Gold Rush (Harvard University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write...
William Novak is Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. This interview is based on his new book, New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State (Harvard University Press, 2022)....
Here is Reinhold Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society. He wrote this book in 1932: Society may believe that the preservation of freedom of opinion is a social good, not because liberty of thought is an inherent or natural...
Christopher Pearl is Associate Professor of History at Lycoming College. This interview is based on his new book, Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State (University of Virginia Press, 2020). JF: What led you to write Conceived in...
The members of Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet are regular features of the 24-hour news cycle. He has fired members of his cabinet who challenge his thinking on a host of foreign and domestic issues. Just ask Rex Tillerson, James Mattis,...
Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them are ruined too: wherefore governments rather depend on men, than men upon governments . Let men be good,...
In the midst of our current pandemic, several historian friends have been referencing Alison Collis Greene‘s book No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta. Greene’s book shows, among other things,...
Watch: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9WWSXNH6cY&w=560&h=315]...
One of our finest American historians, Yale’s David Blight, reminds us that Americans have always relied on the government in times of crisis. Here is a taste of his piece at The Atlantic: In August 1861, several months after the secession...
Sure, Donald Trump and Congress are to blame. Trump will probably get more blame than Congress, but historians will have to sort that one out. But ultimately it us, the American people, who are responsible for the government shutdown. Why? ...
Robert Jeffress says that Christians who support DACA (including the signers of this letter and Pope Francis) err on the side of compassion. The court evangelical who is often found standing at the immediate right hand of the POTUS claims...
In his weekly column, Garrison Keillor wonders what happens when conservatives who don’t like big government need the help of big government. It’s an entertaining critique of Texas conservatives. Here is a taste: I’m all in favor of pouring money...
This story is a week or two old at this point, but I just came across the summer reading list for Gene Ponder’s AP Government class at Spanish Fort High School in Baldwin County, Alabama: What shocks me the most...
I recently heard Senator John McCain say that Donald Trump’s recent budget proposal, amply titled “America First: A Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” will be dead on arrival in the Senate. But what if Trump’s budget, which cuts over...
It turns out that the United States government has had a long fascination with psychics, the paranormal, ESP, and the occult. Check out Colin Dickey’s review of Annie Jacobsen’s book Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations Into...
I got in late last night and missed Dr. Ben Carson’s appearance on the CNN GOP Town Hall. Earlier today I finally got a chance to see Carson’s answer to a question about faith and the welfare state. It has...
Brian Balogh, a historian at the University of Virginia and one of the American History Guys, addresses this question: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ29FjY39Tk]...
Jim DeMint is a former United States Senator from South Carolina. He currently serves as president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. He is also the author of a new book: Falling in Love With Amercia...
Kenneth Bernstein is a retired high school government teacher. He has spent most of his career teaching AP courses at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, MD. He was the 2010 Washington Post Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher. In a revealing...
