Author: H. A. Scott Trask (H. A. Scott Trask)

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Pax Americana
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Pax Americana

“America is not to be Rome or Britain.  It is to be America.” —Charles Beard William Kristol boasts that September 11 proves the neocons to have been prophets because, after the Cold War, they alone warned that the world had become a more dangerous place, not a safer one.  He and his crowd cite three...

Who’s the Ugliest of Them All?
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Who’s the Ugliest of Them All?

“Empires are not built in fits of absent-mindedness.” —Charles A. Beard Described by the author as a “venture in contemporary history,” American Empire is also an in-depth study of the post-Cold War foreign policies of the last three presidential administrations, all of which Andrew Bacevich believes sought to preserve and extend an American empire.  Bacevich,...

The Point of War
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The Point of War

The U.S. government continues its slow but relentless buildup of military forces in the Middle East, preparing to unleash “Fourth-Generation” warfare against the eighth reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.  Historians and pseudo-historians extol the liberating glories of past redemptive wars waged by God’s instrument on earth.  The Bush administration, neocons, and theocons (and other cons in...

Therapeutic Totalitarianism
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Therapeutic Totalitarianism

Paul Gottfried has spent a useful career shining his lantern of truth into the dark corners of America’s political consciousness.  In After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State (1999), he examined the rise and consolidation of centralized managerial regimes across the Western world.  Gottfried documented what should have been obvious to every educated man:...

Our Country, ’Tis of We . . .
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Our Country, ’Tis of We . . .

What’s So Great About America by Dinesh D’Souza Washington: Regnery; 227 pp., $27.95 Dinesh D’Souza is a classic example of the immigrant imperialist.  Others are Fouad Ajami (professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University), Fareed Zakaria (managing editor of Foreign Affairs and a contributing editor to Newsweek), and Ramesh Ponnuru (a senior editor...

Sic Semper Tyrannis
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Sic Semper Tyrannis

Abraham Lincoln remains the central historical figure in modern America; the only others who can compete with him in their influence on the present and the degree of adulation accorded them are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Rev. “Dr.” Martin Luther King, Jr.  Lincoln is praised for having accomplished two things: preserving the Union and...

America’s Second-Worst Dynasty
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America’s Second-Worst Dynasty

Richard Brookhiser’s biographical study of four generations of the Adams family illustrates once again that the rich and complex history of our country remains a closed book to the ruling class and their literary apologists.  Brookhiser reveals in his introduction that his purpose is to create a usable past: “The United States is formally an...

Why the West Has Won
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Why the West Has Won

One of the important lessons of Victor Davis Hanson’s riveting new book, Carnage and Culture, is that the only civilization or culture that can defeat the West is the West.  “In the long history of European military practice,” Hanson writes, “it is almost a truism that the chief military worry of a Western army for...

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The Time of Our People

Geronimo: An American Legend Produced by Walter Hill, Neil Canton, and Columbia Pictures Directed by Walter Hill Photography by Lloyd Ahem Screenplay by John Milius and Larry Gross If you are a lover of film but have never seen Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), you are missing not only one of the best Westerns ever...

As We Go Marching
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As We Go Marching

“Let no one believe that children a hundred years from now in the future of America will not be sick for what our fools and unconscious criminals are doing today.” —Robinson Jeffers Who has not heard David McCullough pontificate on the “greatness” of Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and now John Adams, or watched James McPherson...

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A Southern Braveheart

Ride With the Devil Produced by Ted Hope, Robert F. Colesberry, and James Schamu Directed by Aug Lee Screenplay by James Schamus Released by Universal Pictures and Good Machine It can be argued that the War Between the States began not at Fort Sumter but along the Missouri-Kansas border in the mid-1850’s. The passage of...

Christianity and Slavery in the Old South
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Christianity and Slavery in the Old South

        “Slavery is as ancient as war, and war as human nature.” —Voltaire Americans, with their strong tendency to externalize the evil within them and to project it onto others, have been waging crusades to extirpate or crush one kind of evil or another for almost 200 years now. The Pelagian belief...

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A Small Margin

Concealed handguns could have been carried by law-abiding, responsible citizens of Missouri under Proposition B, but on April 6, Missouri voters defeated the measure by a small margin (52 to 48 percent). To qualify for a concealed-carry permit, one would have had to be at least 21, have taken 12 hours of state-approved firearms training,...

Franklin Pierce and the Fight for the Old Union
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Franklin Pierce and the Fight for the Old Union

If Franklin Pierce is remembered at all today it is as an inept, do-nothing President whose only accomplishment was to sign the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Historians generally cite this bill, along with the 1857 Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case, as evidence of the aggressive designs of the South to extend slavery...