American History

The global celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall aren't entirely about commemorating the rebirth of freedom or reliving those thrilling moments when a perverse and repressive system collapsed. Listen closely to the exalted commentary recounting the events of those historic days and you're also likely to hear the subtle intonations of regret and nostalgia.

Not too long ago, I predicted that a solid recent history of the 2008 election (Richard Wolffe's "Renegade") was likely to be the final word until President Obama wrote his own version of those storied events. A few months later, it appears that the conveyor belt is just getting started and that we will be reading about 2008 for a while to come. My bad!

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that someone's not after you. Over the last few months, a lot of writers have dusted off Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay on the paranoid style in American politics just so they can explain away the loony rumors and conspiracy theories coming from the far right. But no amount of intellectual condescension is going to make those powerful untruths go away.

On Sept. 18, Irving Kristol died. On Feb. 27, 2008, William F. Buckley Jr. passed away. Kristol was known as "the godfather of neoconservatism," while Buckley was the founder of the "movement conservatism" of Goldwater and Reagan. The intellectual conservatism that they, in different ways, sought to foster had passed from the scene before they did.

Every Democratic presidency since Lyndon Johnson's (that is, both of them) has followed a pattern: A fresh face enters the White House bringing new hope and big ideas, delivers his agenda to Congress, and quickly gets the back of the hand from the contemptuous grandees of his own party. With little accomplished, congressional Democrats suffer major losses in the midterm elections. Over the next two years, even less progress is made.

A "fan" of what he calls "The Obama Show," the Cos says if you can't be a doctor, at least be an electrician.

In Memoirs of a Trotskyist, Irving Kristol, one of the most daring and provocative American intellectuals of the 20th century, recounted his years as a young radical at New York's City College. What he recalled most vividly weren't the seminars and lectures that made up his formal education, but rather the mostly playful--but occasionally very heated-arguments that took place among friends in Alcove No. 1, a small corner of the dark and dank college cafeteria that was home to the anti-Stalinist left. 

For eight television seasons (NBC, 1984-92), the Emmy Award-winning The Cosby Show, written by and starring comedian Bill Cosby, beamed an unflinching, yet humorous black family portrait into living rooms across America. Cosby, as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, presided over this historic foray into black upper-middle class life. The sitcom was a window into a certain, often enviable kind of black familial and romantic love, a showcase for amazing talent, and a place where the situations or "problems" of a

Go ahead, hit me with all the Tipper Gore jokes you want, but I'm beginning to think that U.S. political news, like rap music, needs a parental warning notification.

Every few years or so, we have a collective paroxysm over the bad behavior of this or that group of public figures. We fret over what the antics of sports stars or celebrities teach our children. Whether they're taking illegal steroids or partying without their knickers, we hope and pray that… more