Reflections on God … Man … Life
Thoughts on history and the historical profession. Clio is the muse of history–this category title is a play on that concept.
Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, a man who has been a source of great controversy among conservatives. They are divided: some respect him greatly, while others consider him a violator of the Constitution and a tyrant. In my early years, I tended to lean in the latter direction. I was so devoted to states’ rights and so distressed over the growth of the federal government that I felt Lincoln was a large part of… Read more »
So many people want to be president. Perhaps it would do them some good to remember comments by America’s first three presidents. When Washington was elected to the presidency, he wrote to Henry Knox: My movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful… Read more »
Herbert Hoover & the Great Depression The Republican Party has “died” many times. Yet it always seems to be resurrected. We can start with Herbert Hoover, whose administration coincided with the Great Depression. Elected in 1928 at the height of economic prosperity, Hoover has ever since been associated with the worst economic disaster in American history. He did help make it happen; specifically, he helped prolong it with his government interventionist policies. But his successor, FDR, was the one who… Read more »
Noted British historian Paul Johnson titled one of his chapters in his book Modern Times “America’s Suicide Atempt.” Johnson was talking about the 1960s and 1970s. Assassinations (John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King), the Vietnam War, race riots in the cities and student riots on campuses, the entire Watergate fiasco, and the miserable economy of the 1970s were his targets. We can add Roe v. Wade to that list. It was as if America had lost its mind. Today… Read more »
All of America’s early colonies had legislatures of their own. Most of them, from the start, had been allowed self-government in their charters. When the British government began to change the rules by taxing them without any representation in Parliament, the colonies reacted. Their first line of defense was the charters they had been given. When the British government dismissed their arguments, they turned instead to the idea that God had given each person the right to direct his own… Read more »
They were called Separatists in their native England. They got this name because they couldn’t abide being part of a state church where the government controlled the worship and doctrine. So they set up their own churches based on their understanding of how God wanted His church to work, following what they perceived to be the model in the New Testament. When they set up these churches, they had to start from scratch with church government. Consequently, they relied on… Read more »
George H. W. Bush inherited a robust economy from Reagan. He even pledged, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” If only he had stayed faithful to that pledge. He did reject new taxes from a Democratic Congress a number of times, but as part of a budget deal in 1990, he allowed some taxes to be raised. That angered his conservative base, a base he would need in the next election. In early 1991, after the success of the Gulf War, Bush’s approval rating was… Read more »