Knowledge of history and democracy

by

Text of Declaration of Independence Saw an interesting article today: Back to School, Back to U.S. History Basics from George Nethercutt is probably one of the best arguments I have read for emphasizing historical literacy in schools that I have seen in a long time. I have posted before about the general lack of civics knowledge in America and it is worth saying again and again that civics and history knowledge is essential to the functioning of American democracy. The argument that if the citizens of a country lack knowledge about the historical roots of their government and nation then they will not long keep either is very true. Is … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Countdown: The Liberators by Tom Kratman

by

Tom Kratman published his first book, A State of Disobedience, in 2005. This is the first book in a new series by Kratman, I am currently in the middle of reading the second book, which just hit my mailbox last week. The series starts another of Kratman’s “fiction as commentary on the contemporary world” series somewhat similar to his “A Desert Called Peace” series. This does not mean that it is a bad book, it is not. It is somewhat predictable though. I especially like Kratman’s style, he has a gritty down to earth writing style that I love. He does not pull punches. The book is the story of … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Penguin History of Europe by J.M. Roberts

by

I cannot remember why I bought The Penguin History of Europe by J.M. Roberts several years ago, no doubt it was as a resource for an undergrad paper I wrote although I cannot find it used as a cite in any of my papers. It is also possible that I bought it just because I though it looked interesting since my specialty is European history. This is not a bad book, but it is also not quite what the title makes it out to be. I think the best way I an categorize this book is that it presents an eclectic view of European history. It is very well written … More after the Jump…

Rick Perry on Social Security

by

Being a Texas resident I like Rick Perry so I will probably be posting a lot about him in the run up to next year’s election.   I predict that Perry will win the Republican nomination and trounce Obama.   The question is who will be his running mate?  I think and hope it will be Herman Cain. Here is the first link:  A commentary piece from Perry in USA Today

Spam Comments on my Blog

by

I get about 15-20 spam comments on my blog every day.   Most are the “Thanks for that Awesome posting, it saved MUCH time” variety.   They usually have a link in them to anything from Viagra ads, penis enlargement, cheap homeloans, to how to get student aid.   I am currently doing an experiment to see many of the “thanks for that Awesome posting spam I get as a percentage of all the spam I get.   My gut tells me that the “awesome posting” spam is about 50% of all the spam I get.   I have recieved 31 spam comments in the past two days and 18 … More after the Jump…

How did the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan impact the Cold War?

by

As the period of détente during the 1970’s continued, the rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the United States seemed to intensify and promised to lessen tensions between the rival countries.   The invasion of Afghanistan and the imposition of a communist regime seemed to signal that the communists had not abandoned their dream of global conquest.   This caused the United States to renew their efforts to halt the communist expansion by supporting the Afghan rebels in their efforts to expel the Russians. After the Soviet invasion, progress towards furthering friendly relations between the west and Soviets halted and even moved backwards.   Ronald Reagan, the newly elected American … More after the Jump…

The Campaign in Central Mexico 1847-1848: In Search of Decision

by

After the northern campaign of General Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), failed to force the Mexican government to sue for peace, President James Polk (1795-1849) decided on an invasion of central Mexico with the goal of capturing Mexico City.   The planning for an invasion of central Mexico was the brainchild of General Winfield Scott (1786-1866), who prepared a series of three memorandums laying out the case for the operation, which he sent to President Polk in October 1846.[1] Scott had desired a command of his own since the beginning of the war and he felt slighted that he had not been given command of the force in northern Mexico.   Scott … More after the Jump…

The God Clause

by

I ran across a piece in Bloomberg Businessweek that is very interesting. The God Clause and the Reinsurance Industry It is a fairly long story but the gist of it is that reinsurer’s, companies that essentially insure insurance companies, have some very sophisticated models for assessing risk but even they are not omniscient when it comes to natural events. The way these companies caegorize risk is interesting in the extreme. Lloyds of London has an entire section of their website devoted to analyzing risk and they annually put out a list of Realistic Disaster Scenarios.   What I found most interesting were the examples in the story of the way … More after the Jump…

China: A Potential or Current Threat?

by

Jed Babbitt has an excellent piece on RCP today that talks about the potential threat China represents to the US and by implication, the rest of the Western world.China’s Economic Sword.   People have been pointing to the potential threat China poses for at least the past twenty+years and are almost invariably poo-pooed as being unrealistic and that China does not pose a threat to the US they just want to modernize and bring the fruits of that modernization to their own people.   I tend to think that China is indeed a threat and a threat we in the West ignore at our own peril. There are several developments … More after the Jump…

BOOK REVIEW: Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

by

I have read several of Niall Ferguson’s books and while I may not always agree with him hi writing style and analysis are always interesting and thought provoking.   Civilization: The West and the Rest is no different.   I have the UK edition of the book, I doubt it is significantly different from the US edition except for the cover, but cannot guarantee it. In this book Dr. Ferguson attempts to analyze and explain why the West, which he defines as European and countries with a European heritage, has prospered so much over the past 500 years and how the West managed to control so much of the globe. … More after the Jump…

The Fall of Qaddafi and the future of the “Arab Spring”

by

I wrote about the war/action/conflict/kinetic what have you in Libya when it kicked off in March, April, and again in June. With the rebels now storming Tripoli itself and being on the verge of success under the cover of NATO, the question now becomes what will the successor regime look like. I will guess here and say that it will be a notional democracy wit an oligarchy of strongmen in power. They will also make all the right noises to placate the soft-heads in the west and make them feel good about their policy of R2P. It will probably not be long before the new regime starts hunting down Qaddafis … More after the Jump…

The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade

by

The Cathars were a radical religious sect that had taken root in southern France and by the early thirteenth century a good part of the population of the area were Cathars.   The Cathars held radically different beliefs from Christianity and are properly considered a different religion entirely, rather than a perversion of Christianity itself.[1] They believed that there were two worlds the spiritual and the material, only the spiritual was clean of sin while the material world was inherently sinful.   In order to escape the inherent sinfulness of their human existence the Cathars underwent a ritual known as the consolamentum.   This ritual was a kind of combination … More after the Jump…

The Peace of Augsburg and Modern Germany

by

The Peace of Augsburg is the settlement between the Holy Roman Emperor and all his princes and nobility that established that the religion of a locality in Imperial Germany will be the same as that of its ruler.   The only two religions allowed were what we today call Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism.   At the Peace every German state and principality had its religion determined. Many people may wonder what the 460 year old Religious Peace of Augsburg has to do with a modern European state.   I did too until recently when I started to think about it.   Let me lay out my train of thought.   … More after the Jump…

The Fronts of World War I in 1917 & 1918

by

The tactical and strategic situation at the beginning of 1917 was little changed from that at the beginning of 1916.   All that the offensives on the Western Front had managed to accomplish the previous year were minor changes in the trace of the trenches and massive loss of life.   Both the British and French planned further offensives in the west during the years but events would intervene to ensure that only the British committed themselves to large-scale offensives on the Western Front in 1917. The spring and summer saw the French army undergo a crisis of confidence that has come to be known as the French mutinies, thought … More after the Jump…

+ More