Roundup 
This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
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1/22/2021
The Roundup Top Ten for January 22, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians from around the web this week.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
1/19/2021
The Sheer Absurdity of Trump’s “1776 Commission” Report Is Hard to Overstate
by Timothy Messer-Kruse
"If American education was organized according to its blueprint it would look strikingly like the schoolrooms common in 1776, complete with rulers used primarily to rap the knuckles of students who answered their questions the wrong way."
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SOURCE: New York Daily News
1/20/2021
Making Revisionism Great Again: The Trouble with Trump’s Rewriting of American History
by James Loewen
"We already have the education that the commission recommends. Our textbooks are nationalist and ethnocentric, rather than critical. That’s why we’re in trouble."
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
1/21/2021
Why the Mob Thought Attacking the Capitol was their ‘1776 Moment’
by Franita Tolson
"The pro-Trump insurrectionists seeking to replicate 1776 ignore that America has consistently recommitted itself to democracy in the two centuries since the Revolution — choosing voting over violence and ballots over bullets."
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SOURCE: The Bulwark
1/15/2021
The Last Action Hero and the First President
by Craig Bruce Smith
If an Austrian-born bodybuilder, a Hollywood actor, can learn the value of the Founders’ ideals, maybe we can too.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/18/2021
The Challenges of Teaching the Constitution in the Age of Trump
by Nikolas Bowie
The Constitution has long been used for antidemocratic purposes; the vigorous enforcement of the Reconstruction amendments' guarantees of multiracial democracy was the historical aberration.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
1/15/2021
Trump Is a Threat to Democracy. But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Winning
by Daniel Bessner and Ben Burgis
Overreaction to the horror of January 6 risks giving license to a host of new internal security measures that will likely threaten democracy more than the misguided and futile efforts of Donald Trump and his followers to overturn the election.
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SOURCE: LA Progressive
1/17/2021
Immigrants, Trump, Pope Francis, and Two Films
by Walter G. Moss
Two recent films evoke Pope Francis's message opposing insular nationalism, a stance which echoes the inclusionary nationalism of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
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SOURCE: Washington Monthly
1/15/2021
Impeach Trump, But Not for What He Said on January 6th
by Jonathan Zimmerman
There's ample justification for Trump's second impeachment in his pattern of disregard for democracy and efforts to subvert the vote count. But reviving the charge of incitment of insurrection opens the door to ideological prosecution and the suppression of free speech.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
1/15/2021
That Time Private US Media Companies Stepped in to Silence the Falsehoods and Incitements of a Major Public Figure … In 1938
by William Kovarik
"There’s not much that separates, on the one hand, the mad fanaticism that held Jews supposedly responsible for their own persecution in 1938 and, on the other, the fevered delusion of 2020."
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SOURCE: Public Books
1/18/2021
When Black Humanity is Denied
by Edna Bonhomme
Enlightenment institutions – the prison, science, and asylums – are organized through binaries that draw boundaries between people who are and are not able to exercise freedom. Black artistic work supports Black freedom by challenging those boundaries.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/17/2021
No, the Constitution Does not Allow President Trump to Pardon Himself
by Dale Carpenter
The history of debate over the pardon power in the Constitiution strongly supports the claim that a president's pardon of themselves would be unconstitutional.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/15/2021
In a Civil War, Accountability Must Precede Healing
by Melody Barnes and Caroline E. Janney
"With no consequences for their acts of rebellion, the months after Appomattox saw former Confederates regain local and state control and bend it to their purposes."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/18/2021
Warnock’s Election Reminds Us that Black Churches are Vital to Democratic Success
by Robert Greene II
Democratic politicians must recognize the historical role of Black churches not just as gathering places where visiting politicians may speak to voters, but as organizing spaces where political agendas are formed. Dems who wish to emulate Rev. Warnock's victory need to embrace Black churches in a deep way.
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SOURCE: Washington Monthly
1/18/2021
What the Founders Would Have Done with Trump
by Frank O. Bowman III
"The impeachment mechanism written into the American Constitution owes its structure to a set of very specific lessons the Framers drew from British and classical history," writes a constitutional law scholar. Those lessons point to the validity of trying Trump in the Senate even after the end of his presidency.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/19/2021
Hamilton and Lincoln Warned of a Mobocracy. Trump Brought Their Fears to Life
by Andrew F. Lang
Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln both feared demagogues who might corrupt the body politic and turn a free citizenry against the democratic institutions that safeguarded their liberty.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
1/19/2021
Why It’s Time to Take Secessionist Talk Seriously
by Richard Kreitner
"The Confederate flags the insurgents carried through the Capitol weren’t about the past, but the future." (note: Subscription required to read source article.)
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/21/2021
Georgia’s New Senators will Write the Next Chapter in Black-Jewish Relations
by Jeff Melnick
The history of the Leo Frank trial and lynching shows that, while both groups have faced prejudice and discrimination, "the glory of Black-Jewish relations has always been more aspirational than achieved." Georgia's two new senators have a chance to advance a coalition for progress and equity.
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SOURCE: Public Seminar
1/21/2021
Embracing Democracy: The Storming of the US Capitol and the Positive Lessons of Weimar Germany
by Andrew I. Port
A 1922 political assassination rallied the German public and political class against the far right. The Weimar Republic's failure to consolidate itself around the idea of democracy shows that the January 6 Capitol riot cannot be allowed to fade from discussion lest the authoritarian beliefs behind it return even stronger.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
1/19/2021
Why is Charles Curtis's Legacy So Complicated?
by Kiara M. Vigil
VP Charles Curtis advocated for policies toward Native American nations that today seem steeped in paternalist and assimilationist values, but in the context of the 1920s his legacy should be seen as part of debate among Native leaders about the tension between preservation and incorporation of modern American society.
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