Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about the intersection of 9-11 and Civil War remembrance. It started with a post on the subject and that led to two newspaper interviews. An Associated Press article on 9-11 that I was recently interviewed for gave me the opportunity to explore the subject a bit further. [...]
Current Affairs
Earlier today I spent some time with an Associated Press writer discussing connections between Civil War remembrance and the upcoming anniversary of 9-11. I tried to outline some of the shifts that have taken place in our collective memory of the Civil War and suggested that our national memory of 9-11 will likely follow these [...]
Update: In it’s first decision since the resignation of half of its committee members, the West Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission denied a funding request from The Guyandotte Civil War Days festival committee. It turns out that the committee invited H.K. Edgerton to give the keynote address. Clearly, the WV commission made the right decision. Karl S. [...]
This weekend’s shooting in Tuscon, Arizona has led to a great deal of commentary about the intense partisanship that currently animates our political discourse. I am as concerned as the next person about the short- and long-term consequences of a political landscape and media culture that seems to have little patience for rational debate. To [...]
[Thanks to Ta-Nehisi Coates for the link.] The ongoing debate about Republican candidate for Congress, Rich Iott’s hobby of portraying a Waffen SS soldier, raises a number of interesting questions about what we expect from people who choose to embrace the past through reenacting. In the case of Iott, there seems to be little patience [...]
The Tea Party movement has given us a number of colorful candidates this election cycle. Now we can add to the list one Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District. It turns out that Mr. Iott enjoys wearing Waffen SS uniforms as a one-time member of a Nazi reenactment group. Of [...]
Today I decided to kill a few minutes by browsing a bit at my local bookstore. To my surprise I noticed a new book by Jill Lepore, who happens to be one of my favorite historians. Her latest book is titled, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American [...]
It’s a dismal and rainy day here in central Virginia and one that begs for a late afternoon nap. But before I do so I took a quick tour of the blogosphere and came across a wonderful dialog over at Richard Williams’s site. Richard goes after another one of those dangerous leftist academics who refuses [...]
