I’ve been thinking about 20th Century history lately. At the beginning of WWII, not only did Hitler invade Poland, but Stalin did as well in the days when they were buddy-buddy for a while. And it was Stalin who took … Continue reading →
(1) For sanctions to work, they should not necessarily be considered a deterrence or a punishment. I suppose they would be a deterrence if the leader or leaders involved could be deterred that easily, but that sort of leader isn’t … Continue reading →
For most of my life I never had any interest in genealogy, although I did have an interest in family stories. And it was the family story of a long-lost great-uncle, a mystery I wanted to solve, that propelled me … Continue reading →
What went on in this country post-January 6th, and what’s going on in Canada now, have historical precedents not just in repressive dictatorships but even in the US and Canada. It seems that the authorities are always frightened of demonstrations … Continue reading →
For me, the 1980s are somewhat of a blur, because I spent them having a baby and then raising that baby and intermittently working part-time. I was exhausted much of the time, and not really part of the zeitgeist. Which … Continue reading →
Our Founders set up our republic in a certain way because they were students of history, and also because they were extremely thoughtful and smart. They had studied the history of governmental rise and decline and fall, tried to learn … Continue reading →
Let me start by asking whether anyone has accused Whoopi Goldberg of cultural appropriation regarding her stage name? Not only was her birth name Caryn Johnson, but her Jewish last name – and of course her silly first name – … Continue reading →
I’m confess I’m a bit stumped about the motive for this series of votes on Wednesday night. First, there was consideration of HR1 itself, and Republicans blocked taking up the bill. Then Schumer asked for a vote “to change the … Continue reading →
The idea that Joe Biden floated yesterday at his press conference – that the next election might be illegitimate if Congress doesn’t pass the Democrats’ radical “voting reform” bill – would have once been verboten. But in the last two-plus … Continue reading →
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting was the first book I ever read by Milan Kundera back when it was first published in 1980, and it probably is still my favorite work of his. It’s a very strange but wonderful … Continue reading →
[NOTE: The topic of the two-volume graphic novel Maus came up in a recent thread, and I’ve decided to republish a review that I first wrote in 2009. So here it is.] I recently reread the two-volume graphic novel Maus, … Continue reading →
Here’s a sickening story: A staff member at a Washington DC school has been suspended after making third-grade children reenact scenes from the Holocaust, including getting them to pretend to dig mass graves and shoot victims, and telling them the … Continue reading →