January 6, 2021: A Day of Populist Transgression
By Robert A. Schneider
The Latest 
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Cynicism and Political Blunder: A Postscript to “The January 6th Assault on Congress and the Fate of the GOP’s Faustian Bargain"
Jeffrey Herf
Mitch McConnell's decision to condemn Trump after voting for his acquittal wasn't just an act of cowardice. The acts taken together constitute a major tactical blunder in the emerging battle for control of the Republican Party.
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Don't Defend Democracy With Half-Truths About the Past
Brook Thomas
Although the Capitol riots raised deep concern about the rule of law, there is a deeper challenge ahead of the nation: to understand and change the undemocratic aspects of our foundational law and refuse half-measures in the name of unity.
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Who Deserves Credit for Inventing Vaccination? And Why Does it Matter Today?
John Rhodes
Historical honesty requires acknowledging the African and Asian inoculation practices that preceded and enabled Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine. Telling this story more broadly might also encourage vulnerable communities of color to embrace the COVID vaccine.
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Trump Was Almost Re-Elected. What Does That Say About Us?
Walter G. Moss and Rick Shenkman
Joe Biden's popular vote and electoral margins were large, but only a small number of votes proved decisive. Moving ahead, it is necessary to understand what Trump's ongoing popularity says about America.
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Advice to POTUS 46 from POTUS 1
David O. Stewart
The author of a recent political biography of George Washington wonders how the first president would guide the most recent one.
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Must the Capitol Riots be Included in the Legacy of American Dissent?
Ralph Young
Teachers of history might feel a disconnect between praising American traditions of dissent and condemning the Capitol riots. They shouldn't. Historical evaluation of the grievances of dissenters, whatever their methods, finds real grievances, not lies, at the root of dissent.
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Blog
John Brown’s Body
Ann Banks
Who taught me “John Brown’s Body?” I don’t remember but I loved to sing it. I had no idea who John Brown was or what the song was about but I was drawn to it par...
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Neal Gabler's "Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour"
James Thornton Harris
Neal Gabler's first volume of a biography of Ted Kennedy praises the long-serving senator as the driving force of a hugely consequential period of liberal legislative success. Those looking for gossip or consideration of his personal failures may be disappointed.
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From Red Finn Halls to The Lincoln Brigade: Class Formation on Washington’s “Red Coast”
Jerry Lembcke
If the current crisis revives interest in class as an analytical concept, a recent book on union organizing on the Washington state coast offers a model for reconstructing the work, community and social life of a community.
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"Hamilton" and Politics Today
Donald J. Fraser
The phenomenally successful "Hamilton" takes some liberties with its subject, but it still offers some valuable perspective on our politics today.
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The Roundup Top Ten for February 19, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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History, Evidence and the Ethics of Belief
Guy Lancaster
Untrammelled freedom of belief has been enshrined as an American civic virtue. The nation, democracy, and possibly the planet are imperiled without a collective commitment to respect belief only to the extent available evidence supports it.
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Immigrant Families are the Second Casualty of War
Elliott Young
If truth is the first casualty in war, immigrants follow as a close second. During the first and second world wars, tens of thousands of immigrants in the United States were locked up in prisons as part of a geopolitical game beyond their control.
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Opportunities for a Catholic President, Then and Now
Patrick Lacroix
Polling of religious voters might encourage Democrats to give up on reaching them. John F. Kennedy's experience shows that Joe Biden, as the second Catholic President, could succeed in narrowing the gap.
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Trumpism after Trump: Beyond Fascism
Gavriel Rosenfeld
Understanding the future of the far-right grievance politics catalyzed by the Trump presidency, it might be helpful to think of it as "MAGA-ism," a 21st century American phenomenon.
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The Balance of Power in 2021 Rests with Two Senators
Michael Landis
The actions of pro-slavery northern "doughfaces" in Congress, led by Stephen Douglas of Illinois, helped to protect the expansion of slavery even as a national majority grew to oppose it. Today, Joe Manchin and Jon Tester will have to consider home state elections, their own conservative tendencies, and the fate of the Biden administration's policy agenda and act accordingly.
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Political Violence: Still as American as Cherry Pie
Alan J. Singer
SNCC leader H. Rap Brown declared that violence was "American as cherry pie" in 1967. Though his remarks were scorned then, he was correct, and no movement for justice can succeed without acknowledging it.
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What Becomes of a Broken Party?
James Robenalt
The Republican Party seems to be refusing the opportunity to save itself by rejecting Trumpism. His acquittal in a second Senate trial means he will be free to demand the party bend to his will or be destroyed.
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Blog
Understanding John F. Kennedy: A Conversation with Acclaimed Historian and JFK Biographer Professor Fredrik Logevall
Robin Lindley
Robin Lindley interviews Fredrik Logevall about the research and writing of the first volume of his praised biography of John F. Kennedy.
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A Lesson Unity and Renewal: George Washington and the Building of the Capital City
Robert P. Watson
The decision to create a national capital city and the execution of the plan was an underappreciated legacy of George Washington's leadership and a key force uniting a fragile new nation.
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Heed the Cornerman's Cry
Mike McQuillan
The failure to heed the warnings of the Kerner Commission in 1968 – of a society divided by racism and inequality – has led to ongoing suffering and a politics of resentment over an ethic of mutual care.
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King’s Final Book: Both Political Roadmap and Passionate Sermon
Fred Zilian
As Black History Month unfolds amid an atmosphere of crisis and division like that which prevailed in 1968, it's worth revisiting Martin Luther King's publication that year of "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community" – a call for reordering national priorities toward justice through politics and for renewed spiritual and ethical dedication to shared humanity.
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How Abraham Lincoln Can Inspire Peace for Yemen
William Lambers
The postwar "friendship train" campaign involved Americans personally in delivering food to the hungry in Europe, and symbolized the nation's larger commitment to the Marshall Plan. A similar broad effort could help advance the policies needed to end the humanitarian crisis of war and starvation in Yemen.
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Lincoln and the Lesson of Leading From Behind
Michael J. Gerhardt
Joe Biden's inaugural address signals his willingness to follow Abraham Lincoln in "leading from behind" by listening and lifting the voices of others.
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The Roundup Top Ten for February 12, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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History (and Historians) Need a New Deal
Shannan Clark
Only a program of direct public employment for historians, along with other academics, can lead to a vibrant future for the discipline in which access to careers is expanded, with greater diversity and equity. The history of the WPA cultural projects shows us the way.
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To Save Democracy, We Need Historical Memory to be "Hot"
Shannon Bontrager
Historical memory can run hot or cold; hot memory, when we make ourselves vulnerable to the pain of the past, is a force that will ensure America doesn't just move on from the needless death of the COVID pandemic or the violence of the Capitol insurrection without committing to justice and accountability.
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Blog
The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.— A Conversation with Professor Peniel E. Joseph
Robin Lindley
"One of the fascinating things about King’s life is when he evolves and speaks truth to power. He's still talking about nonviolence, but he's speaking in bold radical terms about...
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Young Du Bois in Germany: On the “Great Socialistic State of the Day"
Helmut Smith
As graduate student visiting imperial Germany in 1892, W.E.B. Du Bois was shaped by observations of social welfare policy and experiences of social acceptance that contrasted dramatically with Gilded Age and Jim Crow America.
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How Democrats Lost the Great Plains
Ross Benes
Ross Benes argues that the Democratic party has lost an entire political generation of influence in the Great Plains by forfeiting the region's legacy of farmer populism, making the Plains a Republican stronghold and a barrier to progressive legislation.
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Who Can Claim to be the United States’ First University?
Tom McSweeney, Katharine Ello and Elsbeth O'Brien
New documentary evidence shows that the College of William and Mary was chartered as a university in 1693, making it the first university in the colonies. The story reflects how the sectarian strife of England in the seventeenth century helped Anglican W&M and harmed Puritan Harvard.
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Blog
Absurdity Theory
Steve Hochstadt
Marjorie Taylor Greene's flights of conspiratorialism incorporate the same core of absurdity as all conspiracy theories: that vast numbers of people, whether Jews, Democrats, or the Deep State,...
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Blog
Why Voters Shouldn't Be Given the Chance to Re-Elect Donald Trump
Stone Age Brain
We can't let a president get away with crimes against our democracy just because he commits them in the final months of his term.
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Weaponized Whiteness: Invisible Hand and Iron Fist
Fran Shor
There is a link between the summer's BLM protests and the Capitol riots. Both reflect a crisis of a political order based on the maintenance of white supremacy and nonwhite subordination through the "invisible hand" of institutions.
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Notre Dame: The Soul of France (Review)
Jeff Roquen
Agnès Poirier's book describes the central place of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in the city and in French history both religious and secular, and the angst provoked by its threatened destruction by fire in 2019.
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Unforgettable Images, and Something New in TV News
Ron Steinman
A month past the Capitol Riots, a veteran television news journalist observes that the coverage of the chaotic protest and breach of the Capitol relied on something new: masses of journalists and citizens (including the rioters) recording video on their phones where TV cameras couldn't operate, forming a rich and important composite of the day's events.
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You Call This a Peaceful Transfer of Power?
Philip Gerard
"If we watched this scene play out in Argentina, Turkey, Ukraine, or Thailand, we would bemoan the failure of democracy, write about a fragile government battling rebel insurgents in its own capital, make dire predictions about how long such a government could stand."
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The Constitution Forbids a Post-Presidential Impeachment Trial
William G. Hyland, Jr.
A biographer of George Mason argues that, by the text and original intent of the Constitutional impeachment power, Donald Trump's exposure to trial ended when he left office and the Senate trial set to start on February 8 is unconstitutional.
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Not the First Mob Attack on the Government in D.C.
Stan M. Haynes
An angry mob threatened John Tyler and his family in the White House and burnt him in effigy on the grounds after he vetoed the Whig Party's bill for a second Bank of the United States in 1841, leading Congress to authorize a night police patrol for the District of Columbia.
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The Roundup Top Ten for February 5, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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