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An ‘Error Message’ on the Screen of Western Civ? The Most Important Question Facing us in 2012 is more than an Election The most important question of the coming year is not “who will be the next occupant of the White House?” The single most important matter before us all is a question of value. It is a question that may be stated, “Will the Western world embrace the very thing that holds it together. Or will it continue the denial of the obvious and seal its inevitable decline?” Let me explain. In historiography – the study of history –...

Bushes humorous return to White House (CNN) -- Thursday afternoon, Barack Obama presided over the unveiling of George W. Bush's official portrait in the White House, a warm event that reminds us: It feels like years since President Dubya regaled the world with his famous spoonerisms. His retirement has been defined by an awkward silence. While John McCain's endorsement was trumpeted by Mitt Romney, Bush delivered his in just four words. "I'm for Mitt Romney," he shouted to a journalist as an elevator door closed between them. If, just for old time's sake, Bush had said, "I'm for Ritt Momney,"...

Newt Gingrich is a fat target for everyone. So easy to hit. He makes the others in the race jump up, down and sometimes leap sideways, like it or not. He shakes things up. He forces voters to look differently at things they thought they already understood, lulled by habit rather than thought. That may not be the ultimate role for a leader of the Western world, but for now he's the pause that refreshes. Nowhere is this more obvious than in his relationship to the Jews. When he said the Palestinians are "an invented people," he was speaking not...

WASHINGTON—The alleged liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings entered a new phase upon the release of an updated scholarly report at the National Press Club on Sept. 1. The “Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission” seeks to overturn the widely held belief that the author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States had an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and was the father of one or more of her children. The liaison has gained acceptance and notoriety in popular culture. In February 2000, “Sally Hemings: An American Scandal” was shown...

Starting about 150 years ago, scholars in Europe started rejecting the historical records of Saint Luke. These academics declared that there was no evidence to support the existence of several locations and leaders mentioned in Luke's writings, and therefore, they rejected the entirety of his account. However, I discovered that archaeological finds during the last century have revealed that Luke was a very accurate historian and the two books he authored were absolutely authoritative records of history! One of the greatest archaeologists of all time was Sir William Ramsay. He studied under the famous German historical schools in the mid-nineteenth...

Cornelius Tacitus (c. A.D. 55-120) A Roman historian who lived through the reign of over a half-dozen Roman emperors, Tacitus has been called "the greatest historian of ancient Rome. His most famous works are the Annals and the Histories. The Annals covers from 14 A.D. to approximately 68 A.D. (the death of Augustus up to the time of Nero), while Histories proceeds from 68 A.D. (Nero's death) to 96 A.D. (the time of Domitian). Here is what Tacitus wrote concerning the history of Jesus, and the existence of Christians in Rome: "But not all the relief that could come from...

All: I'll be on the Glenn Beck show for the full hour tomorrow, with historian Burton Folsom discussing the progressive roots of the man child.

Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" sold a million copies and became an alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87. Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said. The historian was a resident of Auburndale, Mass. Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, "A People's History" was — fittingly — a people's best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1...

Accuracy in Media will honor M. Stanton Evans and Karl S. Denninger for their outstanding contributions to journalism in a ceremony taking place during the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award is named for AIM’s founder, Reed Irvine, who was America’s first media watchdog. “I am thrilled to recognize the excellent work of Stan Evans and Karl Denninger,” said Don Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media. “When my father started AIM 40 years ago, few would have believed that one day independent journalists like Stan and Karl would be empowered to stand up...

President/ Score/ rank 2009/rank 2000 Abraham Lincoln 902 1 1 George Washington 854 2 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 837 3 2 Theodore Roosevelt 781 4 4 Harry S. Truman 708 5 5 John F. Kennedy 701 6 8 Thomas Jefferson 698 7 7 Dwight D. Eisenhower 689 8 9 Woodrow Wilson 683 9 6 Ronald Reagan 671 10 11

Here is a brief video report on a survey done by C-Span.org in which they asked Presidential Historians to rank the 42 men who have served as President of the United States (Obama not included). Abraham Lincoln graded out as our greatest President, and James Buchanan as the worst. . . . . . (Watch Video)

As he leaves the White House at the end of his second term, the President has a poll rating of only 23 per cent, and is widely disliked and even despised. His foreign policy has been judged a failure, especially in view of the long, painful, costly war that he declared, which is still not over. He doesn't get on with his own party's presidential candidate, who is clearly distancing himself, and had lost many of his closest friends and staff to scandals and forced resignations. The New Republic, a hugely influential political magazine, writes that his historical reputation will...

One week into the general election, the polls show a dead heat. But many presidential scholars doubt that John McCain stands much of a chance, if any. Historians belonging to both parties offered a litany of historical comparisons that give little hope to the Republican. Several saw Barack Obama’s prospects as the most promising for a Democrat since Roosevelt trounced Hoover in 1932.“This should be an overwhelming Democratic victory,” said Allan Lichtman, an American University presidential historian who ran in a Maryland Democratic senatorial primary in 2006. Lichtman, whose forecasting model has correctly predicted the last six presidential popular vote...

Many historians see little chance for McCain David Paul Kuhn One week into the general election, the polls show a dead heat. But many presidential scholars doubt that John McCain stands much of a chance, if any. Historians belonging to both parties offered a litany of historical comparisons that give little hope to the Republican. Several saw Barack Obama’s prospects as the most promising for a Democrat since Roosevelt trounced Hoover in 1932. “This should be an overwhelming Democratic victory,” said Allan Lichtman, an American University presidential historian who ran in a Maryland Democratic senatorial primary in 2006. Lichtman, whose...

Victor Davis Hanson, a former classics professor, is a renowned conservative scholar of ancient history and military affairs who's recently become a nationally syndicated columnist and blogger. The author of 17 books with titles like "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War," "An Autumn of War" and "Mexifornia: A State of Becoming," he is the senior fellow in residence in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford University campus. Hanson, whose scholarship and interest in individual freedom recently earned him a 2008 Bradley Prize worth $250,000 from the Bradley...

From M. Stanton Evans: Herewith a letter sent to The Wall Street Journal a week ago in response to the recent anti-McCarthy article by Ronald Kessler. By way of explanation for the staccato nature of this letter, I was told that I could have 750-800 words to reply to Kessler (whose article ran to 1,059 words). I overran this by 85 words, but even so it's difficult to answer so many misstatements in such a constricted format. It's significant, for instance, that Kessler (falsely) invokes the authority of Willard Edwards to support his attack against McCarthy. I point out that...

President Bush often argues that history will vindicate him. So he can't be pleased with an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted by the History News Network. It found that 98 percent of them believe that Bush's presidency has been a failure, while only about 2 percent see it as a success. Not only that, more than 61 percent of the historians say the current presidency is the worst in American history. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the historians rated Bush's presidency in last place. Among the reasons given for his low ratings: invading Iraq, "tax breaks for...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2007 – Nearly six years after a terrorist-controlled plane slammed into the Pentagon, killing 184 people aboard the plane and in the building, Defense Department historians have published a book on the incident and its aftermath. Randy Papadopoulos, left, a Naval historian, Nancy K. Berlage, center, an editor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Historical Office, and Diane T. Putney, a historian with the same office, talk with reporters upon the release of "Pentagon 9/11" on Sept. 7, 2007. Defense Department photo by Samantha L. Quigley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “Pentagon 9/11”...

Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), the greatest classical historian of the nineteenth century, was born in Garding, Schleswig, the son of a Protestant minister. He read law and classics at Kiel from 1838-43, and after a few years in France and Italy and a short career in journalism, he became a professor of law at the University of Leipzig. His involvement in the revolution of 1848-49 led to his dismissal in 1850. After holding academic positions at the universities of Zürich and Breslau he was appointed to the chair of Ancient History at the University of Berlin in 1858. He was permanent...

Critics of higher education who say American colleges do not prepare students for life after graduation may be way off base: Among federal judges, the problem may be that they do try to apply their education to the post-graduate day jobs that they hold. “At a seminar for federal judges in Kansas City, one of the more conservative judges said, ‘Isn’t it a shame that people don’t know the five rights in the first amendment,’” historian John Kaminski remembered in a recent forum at the Cato Institute. “One of the more activist judges said, ‘Five rights, I’ve been giving 25...