Category: The Historical Muse

Thoughts on history and the historical profession. Clio is the muse of history–this category title is a play on that concept.

Restoring Humility to the Oval Office

  

Policies, as essential as they are, aren’t the only consideration when choosing leaders. Character is of equal significance. One of the key traits I seek in a candidate is humility. Pride is the cause of untold miseries. An arrogant leader is prone to mistakes based on his unrealistic evaluation of his own personal importance. What really gets to me are the polls that show a majority of Americans think Obama is likeable. Since when? This is the man who wrote… Read more »

George Washington, the Presidency, & Character

  

On this day in 1789, George Washington took the very first presidential oath of office. His inauguration on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City was the beginning of a grand experiment. Although the fledgling nation had been in existence since 1776, it had only an ad hoc government throughout most of the American Revolution, then switched to a very weak Articles of Confederation in the 1780s. At Washington’s inauguration, the new Constitution also was inaugurated. The question… Read more »

Charles (Chuck) Colson (1931-2012)

  

When Chuck Colson broke free from his earthly body this past Saturday, the evangelical world lost one of its foremost spokesmen. He didn’t start out as a Christian leader; in fact, he was considered a political hatchet man and became embroiled in the Watergate controversy, over which he went to prison. But his life changed dramatically. I remember the events of Watergate quite clearly. Just out of college, I followed the fallout from the foolish break-in at the Democrat headquarters… Read more »

Lexington, Concord, & Freedom

  

On this date 237 years ago—April 19, 1775—riders spread throughout the Massachusetts countryside warning citizens that the British Regulars were coming out of Boston. Why the warning? Those troops had two goals. The first was to capture “rebel” ringleaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock at Lexington where they were staying, and send them to Britain to be hanged. The second was to take possession of the area’s militia stores in a town called Concord. They accomplished neither, but they did… Read more »

Honoring Karl Marx: Is That Really What We Want to Do?

  

Since April 15th came on a Sunday this year, today is the filing deadline for federal income taxes. This has become so much a part of life that most Americans probably don’t realize it wasn’t always this way. The federal income tax didn’t exist for the first 137 years of the republic [except for a short time during the Civil War]. Then in 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution [the ratification of which is still suspect historically]… Read more »

The Pocahontas Moment

  

Most of my posts deal with current events, but as a historian, I want to highlight key moments in history. Today, for instance, is the anniversary of a special moment in American colonial history: the Powhatan princess Pocahontas married English settler John Rolfe in 1614. Why is this so important? Pocahontas’s father, Chief Powhatan, had tried to wipe out the Jamestown settlement by starvation just four years earlier. The two cultures weren’t meshing well at all. But when Rolfe and… Read more »

Obamacare & the Supremes

  

No, my title today is not the name of a new rock band. Today marks the opening arguments on the constitutionality of Obamacare before the Supreme Court. Good news would be a decision declaring it unconstitutional. Bad news would be a decision upholding it. But the worst news of all is that it comes down to nine people who may determine this for the whole nation, regardless of the ruling. We have resigned ourselves to the idea that when the… Read more »