News at Home

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  What About the Waitresses?

  by Alison Owings

  I wonder if – when – this viral horror is over, customers will have a new appreciation for the women, and men, who serve.

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  Pandemic Exposes Vulnerabilities of Workers on Farms

  by Verónica Martínez-Matsuda

  Defying the broader conservative political forces of the time, the Farm Security Administration extended health care to tens of thousands of migratory agricultural workers because it understood that farmworkers’ health was vital to the nation’s wellbeing.

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  Sick Leave Provisions in the COVID Relief Bill Were Historic. That's the Problem.

  by Vicki Shabo

  It is well past time for lawmakers to provide permanent paid sick days protections, so that no one is forced to work sick, risk their paycheck or risk their job.

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  New Deal or Nazism? Historical Comparisons to Trump's Performance as a Leader in Crisis

  by Walter G. Moss

  Comparing the first 100 days in power of Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler offers a sobering reminder of the consequences of decisions pursued by leaders in crisis. 

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  Laughter in an Age of Pandemics

  by Michael A. Genovese

  We are all struggling, and we all need the distractions that only absurdity can provide. So laugh now and then; see the silly, the absurd and the comic in life.

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  US v. Sineneng-Smith Echoes the Fugitive Slave Act

  by Alan J. Singer

  A Supreme Court decision in United States v. Sineneng-Smith that broadens the authority of the federal government to suppress the rights of advocates for undocumented immigrants could divide the nation irreparably.

• 
• 3/27/2020
  

  A Word to My Fellow Progressives: Lessons of the 2020 Democratic Primary

  by Andrew Meyer

  This year feels to many progressives like a lost opportunity. With Joseph Biden seemingly certain to win the Democratic nomiatuion, what can progressives learn and apply to the future from the experience of 2020?

• 
• 3/27/2020
  

  Filmmaking, Reality and Fact: How Documentaries Shape Americans' Ideas of Truth

  by Jon Wilkman

  A sizable percentage of Americans get their sense of history through television documentaries. The history of nonfiction filmmaking offers crucial insight on how we got to, and how we might escape, a "post-truth" world.

• 
• 3/26/2020
  

  Can We Build On Yesterday, Salvage Today—And Save Tomorrow?

  by Vaughn Davis Bornet

  A historian and veteran in his 102nd year reflects on the current crisis. It's like nothing else, but we can learn from the past.

• 
• 3/22/2020
  

  Plots Against America?: Jim Crow was Homegrown Fascism

  by Guy Lancaster

  HBO’s prestige adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America makes it worthwhile to examine whether fascism is really so alien to the United States as many wish to believe.

• 
• 3/15/2020
  

  Does Lincoln or Trump Represent the Conscience of the Republican Party?

  by Richard Striner

  The comparison between Lincoln’s Republican Party and today’s Republican Party is especially troubling.

• 
• 3/15/2020
  

  Do We Want the Progressive Sanders or the Pragmatist Biden?

  by Walter G. Moss

  Because his pragmatic style matches more the American tradition, Biden has a better chance of unifying our nation and delivering positive long-range results.

• 
• 3/15/2020
  

  Trump's Budget Proposal Reveals His Values

  by Lawrence Wittner

  It is often said that government budgets are “an expression of values.”  Those values are clear in the Trump administration’s $4.8 trillion budget proposal for 2021, unveiled early this February.

• 
• 3/15/2020
  

  The Cost of Loyalty: A Crisis of Ethics in the Military

  by Timothy Bakken

  Military leadership has inculcated a self-serving culture of loyalty that prevents a long-overdue reckoning with its failures. 

• 
• 3/6/2020
  

  America’s First Literary Voice

  by William Lambers

  The thoughts and feelings of Anne Bradstreet, written hundreds of years ago, live on with us today. 

• 
• 3/6/2020
  

  A Founder of American Religious Nationalism

  by Katherine Stewart

  Christian nationalism today is a political movement, and its primary goal is power. Its ultimate aim, formulated by R.J. Rushdoony, is to replace our modern constitutional Republic with a “biblical” order that derives its legitimacy not from the people but from God and the Bible – or, at least, the God and the Bible that men like Rushdoony claimed to know.

• 
• 3/6/2020
  

  Jack Welch Was a Bitter Foe of American Workers

  by Erik Loomis

  Most national obituaries left out or downplayed Jack Welch’s greatest impact in shaping the unequal and unfair America of today: unionbusting.

• 
• 3/8/2020
  

  Who Killed Ralph Featherstone?

  by Peter Levy

  Reopening the investigation of the bombing deaths of Ralph Featherstone and William Payne at the fiftieth anniversary of the crime will shed further light on the dangers of unchecked government agencies and the shortcomings of the fifth estate.

• 
• 3/1/2020
  

  The Conservative Case for Moving Forrest's Bust

  by Michael Nelson

  To the extent that the arguments of both Forrest’s liberal critics and conservative defenders are valid, the debate about how to remember him is a hard one to resolve. But are the arguments of his defenders valid? I’m a conservative who’s not so sure.

• 
• 3/1/2020
  

  The Left is Back!

  by Walter Hixson

  Whether Bernie Sanders goes on to win the nomination, which appears increasingly likely, the left has risen and it is not likely to recede anytime soon.