Roundup: Talking About History

John R. Miller: FDR’s Failed Moral Leadership

John R. Miller is a former United States Ambassador at Large on Modern Slavery, former Congressman from Seattle, a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. A new book, Where They Stand, written by National Interest editor Robert W. Merry, shows that American historians consistently list Franklin Delano Roosevelt just behind Lincoln and Washington on their ratings of American presidents. A recent issue of Newsweek lists FDR as the top modern president. Years ago, the Schlesinger Presidential Poll even rated FDR first among all presidents. I believe these judgments cannot be sustained. Correcting them might help Americans clarify what kind of character they want in the presidents they elect. FDR was certainly influential.

Gideon Rachman: Britain's Great Power Hangover

Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times. It is the quote that has launched a thousand articles. Dean Acheson’s remark that ‘Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role’ was made fifty years ago, in 1962. Ever since, it has been held up as a uniquely pithy summary of the Great British foreign policy dilemma. If, as seems likely, the UK is about to enter another agonised debate about its relationship with the European Union, the Acheson quote is bound to be rolled out yet again. In Brussels, Britain’s coolness towards the European project is often attributed to some form of post-imperial delusion. ‘The British still think they are a great power’, so it is said, ‘that is why they behave in this peculiar way.’ At some point, somebody will add sagely, that Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States is not all it’s cracked up to be. And, as for the Commonwealth … don’t even get them started. But the idea that Britain is uniquely loaded down by historical baggage does not make much sense in a European context... 

Owen Bennett-Jones: Who Killed Benazir Bhutto?

Owen Bennett-Jones is the author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. He is a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton. In her posthumously published book, Reconciliation, Benazir Bhutto named a man who she believed had tried to procure bombs for an unsuccessful attempt on her life in Karachi in October 2007: I was informed of a meeting that had taken place in Lahore where the bomb blasts were planned … a bomb maker was needed for the bombs. Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government. He had been extradited by the United Arab Emirates and was languishing in the Karachi central jail … The officials in Lahore had turned to Akhtar for help. His liaison with elements in the government was a radical who was asked to make the bombs and he himself asked for a fatwa making it legitimate to oblige. He got one. Akhtar’s story reveals much about modern Pakistan. Born in 1959, he spent two years of his boyhood learning the Quran by heart and left home at the age of 18, moving to the radical Jamia Binoria madrassah in Karachi. In 1980, he went on jihad, fighting first the Soviets in Afghanistan and later the Indians in Kashmir. In both conflicts he came into contact with Pakistani intelligence agents, who were there trying to find out what was going on and to influence events.

Dexter Filkins: General Principles ... How Good Was David Petraeus?

Dexter Filkins joined The New Yorker in January of 2011.  In the Roman conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar led his legions into battle wearing a flowing red cape. The cape made him more likely to be killed but easier for his men to see; it served as a reminder of his fearlessness. John Bell Hood, one of the Confederacy’s most audacious commanders, had his left arm shattered at Gettysburg, and lost his right leg at Chickamauga; from then on, he rode into battle tied to his horse. Even in the Second World War, when senior officers had it easier than their predecessors, General Dwight Eisenhower was so consumed by the job that he smoked four packs of cigarettes and drank fifteen cups of coffee a day. Nowadays, most general officers, at least most American ones, do not see combat. They don’t fire their weapons, and they don’t get killed; for the most part, they don’t even smoke. In wars without front lines, American generals tend to stay inside fortified bases, where they plan missions and brief political leaders via secure video teleconferences. Their credentials are measured as much by their graduate degrees as by the medals on their dress uniforms.

Lee Ruddin: The First Lady’s (Morale-Boosting) Visit to the "Second City of Empire" 70 Years Ago

Lee Ruddin is Roundup Editor at HNN. He lives in England.

Hilary Leila Krieger: The True Meaning of Hanukkah

Hilary Leila Krieger is the Washington bureau chief for The Jerusalem Post.WHEN my brother was in kindergarten, where he was the only Jewish student, a parent organizing enrichment activities asked my mother to tell the class the story of Hanukkah. My mother obligingly brought in a picture book and began to read about foreign conquerors who were not letting Jews in ancient Israel worship freely, even defiling their temple, until a scrappy group led by the Maccabee family overthrew one of the most powerful armies in the world and won their liberty.The woman was horrified.The Hanukkah story, she interrupted, was not about war. It was about the miracle of an oil lamp that burned for eight days without replenishing. She urged my mother to close the book. My mother refused.The woman wasn’t alone. Many Americans, Jews as well as Christians, think that the legend of the long-lasting oil is the root of Hanukkah’s commemoration. And perhaps that mistake is no surprise, given that for many the holiday has morphed into “Christmas for Jews,” echoing the message of peace on earth accompanied by gift giving. In doing so, the holiday’s own message of Jewish survival and faith has been diluted....

Bart D. Ehrman: What Do We Really Know About Jesus?

Bart D. Ehrman is the author of more than 20 books, including the New York Times bestselling Misquoting Jesus and God's Problem. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus. He has been featured in Time magazine and has appeared on NBC's Dateline, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, The History Channel, Fresh Air, and other top media outlets.This past September, Harvard University professor Karen King unveiled a newly discovered Gospel fragment that she entitled “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” This wisp of a papyrus has stirred up a hornet’s nest and raised anew questions about what we can know about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and about whether there are other Gospels outside the New Testament that can contribute valuable information. Few questions could be more timely, here in the season that celebrates Jesus’ birth....

David Welch: Where Have You Gone, Bill Buckley?

David Welch is a former research director for the Republican National Committee.IT is a shame that William F. Buckley Jr. passed away in 2008. The conservative movement could use him — or someone like him — right now.In the 1960s, Buckley, largely through his position at the helm of National Review, displayed political courage and sanity by taking on the John Birch Society, an influential anti-Communist group whose members saw conspiracies everywhere they looked.Fast forward half a century. The modern-day Birchers are the Tea Party. By loudly espousing extreme rhetoric, yet holding untenable beliefs, they have run virtually unchallenged by the Republican leadership, aided by irresponsible radio talk-show hosts and right-wing pundits. While the Tea Party grew, respected moderate voices in the party were further pushed toward extinction. Republicans need a Buckley to bring us back....

Dilip D'Souza: Hitler’s Strange Afterlife in India

Dilip D'Souza is the author of Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America.

Robert Howse: Misreading Leo Strauss ... A Misbegotten Charge of Nazi Sympathies

Robert Howse teaches international law and legal and political philosophy at NYU Law School. He is the author of articles on Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, and Alexandre Kojève, and is writing a book on Strauss's views on war and peace.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: North America's First Black Town?

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root.(The Root) -- Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 8: What was the first black town in North America?As I mentioned in my column about Juan Garrido, the first documented African to land in what is now the United States, in 1513, as a student I was under the impression that the first Africans arrived in the North America in 1619. That was when 20 or so slaves from Angola ended up at Jamestown, Va. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, by 1620, when the Mayflower landed, about 500,000 Africans had already been shipped as slaves to the New World. In other words, those first 20 Africans who arrived in Virginia had a lot of company further to the south, starting in Florida. 

Paul Finkelman: The Monster of Monticello

Paul Finkelman, a visiting professor in legal history at Duke Law School, is a professor at Albany Law School and the author of “Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson.”THOMAS JEFFERSON is in the news again, nearly 200 years after his death — alongside a high-profile biography by the journalist Jon Meacham comes a damning portrait of the third president by the independent scholar Henry Wiencek.We are endlessly fascinated with Jefferson, in part because we seem unable to reconcile the rhetoric of liberty in his writing with the reality of his slave owning and his lifetime support for slavery. Time and again, we play down the latter in favor of the former, or write off the paradox as somehow indicative of his complex depths.Neither Mr. Meacham, who mostly ignores Jefferson’s slave ownership, nor Mr. Wiencek, who sees him as a sort of fallen angel who comes to slavery only after discovering how profitable it could be, seem willing to confront the ugly truth: the third president was a creepy, brutal hypocrite....

Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick: Defending the "Untold History of the United States"

Oliver Stone is a director, screenwriter, and producer. His most recent film is Savages; and among his other films are Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, and Nixon. He is a three-time Academy Award winner for Midnight Express (Best Adapted Screenplay), Platoon (Best Director), and Born on the Fourth of July (Best Director). Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University.

Walter Stahr: How Accurately Did Spielberg Capture Lincoln’s Time?

Walter Stahr is the author of “Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man” and “John Jay.” I read somewhere, not long before my first book was published, that being a published author would ruin the experience of going to a bookstore. I scoffed, but I soon learned that it was all too true. A bookstore will have no copy of your precious baby. Or it will have one or two copies, buried so deep in the back that nobody will see them. Or the store has a few copies well-placed, but nobody seems to be paying any attention to your book, much less buying it.I fear that being the author of a new biography on William Henry Seward, a book that deals with the first few months of 1865, similarly ruins the experience of Steven Spielberg’s new movie on Abraham Lincoln, depicting the same months. As I sat in the theater, I found myself at every turn noting minor errors....Related Links

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore: The Great Silence of China

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore is an editor at Time Out Beijing.BEIJING — On Thursday, China released Feng Xiaogang’s “Back to 1942,” a blockbuster film about the 1942-43 Henan famine, during which roughly three million people starved to death following a drought exacerbated by the Japanese invasion. The film made over $480,000 on its first day and is tipped to break box-office records.......[T]he censors allow “Back to 1942” but hardly tolerate any account of the largely manmade Great Famine that took place under Mao in 1958-62 and left tens of millions dead....The Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.), as the Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng has masterfully shown in “Tombstone,” is terrified to confront its past. First published in Chinese in Hong Kong in 2008, “Tombstone” became available in English in late October, but it is banned here. The C.C.P., which presided over the Great Famine — and still lionizes Mao — has yet to apologize for or officially acknowledge the disaster....

Mary C. Curtis: What ‘Lincoln’ Leaves Out, and Why It Matters

Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning multimedia journalist in Charlotte, N.C., has worked at The New York Times, Charlotte Observer and as national correspondent for Politics Daily. Follow her on Twitter: @mcurtisnc3After Nov. 6, listening to all the explanations for President Obama’s win, I was surprised at the surprise in some quarters about the enthusiastic participation of certain voters, and troubled by the way those votes were marginalized. It goes something like this: Look at all those blacks and Hispanics and Asians and women and young people who put President Obama over the top. How and why did this happen?It happened because Americans stood in long lines to exercise a cherished right, and shouldn’t everyone be happy about that? When strict voter ID bills are scrutinized, not because they might unfairly single out some Americans but because they don’t cull out enough of them, then that’s a problem. And when people are shocked that the powerless make their voices heard, then it’s time for a history lesson.

Gary Gutting: Learning History at the Movies

Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy since 1960,” and writes regularly for The Stone.

Philip Zelikow: Steven Spielberg, Historian

Philip Zelikow is a professor of history and an associate dean for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.Having worked before at the intersection of Hollywood and history, helping a tiny bit with a respectable movie about the Cuban missile crisis called “Thirteen Days,” I approached the new movie “Lincoln” with measured expectations. I had seen how a film could immerse viewers in onscreen time travel without messing up the history too much. But that was the most I hoped for.“Lincoln,” however, accomplishes a far more challenging objective: its speculations actually advance the way historians will consider this subject.The movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president, makes two especially interesting historical arguments.The first is to explain why the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, was overwhelmingly important to Lincoln in January 1865....The question has long vexed historians. The movie’s answer is that Lincoln and his right-hand man in this work, Secretary of State William H. Seward, realized that the war might end at any time and that, when it did, any prospect for passing the amendment as a means to win the war would end with it....

Steven Plaut: Just What Was Fundamentally Wrong with Bolshevism?

Steven Plaut is a native Philadelphian who teaches business finance and economics at the University of Haifa in Israel.  He holds a PhD in economics from Princeton. He is author of the David Horowitz Freedom Center booklets about the Hamas and Jewish Enablers of the War against Israel.

Louis P. Masur: Lincoln at the Movies

Louis P. Masur is a professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. His most recent book is Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union (Harvard University Press, 2012).When John Ford first asked Henry Fonda to play Lincoln, the actor said no. "I can't play Lincoln. That's like playing God," he explained. "You're thinking of the Great Emancipator," responded the director. "This is the jack-legged lawyer from Springfield." Fonda relented, and the result was Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), the best film ever made about Lincoln—until now.Steven Spielberg's Lincoln both overturns a century of cinematic portrayals of the 16th president of the United States and challenges a decades-long scholarly, if not popular, vision of him as halfhearted and reluctant in his efforts to eradicate slavery. Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't just portray Lincoln, he inhabits him, giving us not a stick figure but a beleaguered leader whose crafty political genius leads to passage of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. The film restores for our time a vision of Lincoln as a tireless opponent of slavery and, in the process, speaks to the political problems we face as a nation today....