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.

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 »

Redeeming Rutherford B. Hayes

  

Last week, President Obama made fun of one of his predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, who served as president from 1877-1881. In a campaign speech—which is the description of any and all speeches he makes—Obama referred to people who disagree with his energy policies as those who would have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society if they had lived at the time of Columbus. Now, never mind that no one of any knowledge during Columbus’s life span believed the… Read more »

Reagan & Chambers on the Liberty Fund Blog

  

The names Ronald Reagan and Whittaker Chambers show up frequently in this blog. I was asked to contribute a piece on them at the Liberty Fund blog. It ran yesterday. So in lieu of my usual blog today, I’m linking to Liberty Fund so you can enjoy [hopefully] that piece. Just go to http://libertylawsite.org/post/ronald-reagan-whittaker-chambers-and-the-dialogue-of-liberty/ Chambers was pessimistic about the West’s survival; he didn’t think we still have the moral underpinnings to combat evil. Reagan was more optimistic; he believed freedom… Read more »

A Tale of Christian Martyrdom Well Told

  

I used my Christmas break to do some reading for a new course I’m developing: The American Republic, 1789-1848. The ideas and resources for the course are coming together. One of the books I’m definitely planning to use for this course is An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears by Daniel Blake Smith. As a Christian conservative who deeply appreciates the Biblical grounding of our earliest generations, I’m always alert to those who may try to undermine… Read more »

Chambers, Reagan, & the Spiritual Crisis

  

I finished another semester last Friday. The goal of my teaching is always to point students to Biblical truth; history is the vehicle. At the end of my course covering the second half of American history—after I’ve spent weeks showcasing the loss of Biblical principles in America over the last century or so—I like to close the course with a couple of quotes from those who clearly witnessed this loss and sought to reverse it. Whittaker Chambers and Ronald Reagan… Read more »