By Rebecca Gordon Once upon a time, if a character on TV or in a movie tortured someone, it was a sure sign that he was a bad guy. Now, the torturers are the all-American heroes. From 24 to Zero Dark Thirty, it’s been the good guys who wielded the pliers and the waterboards. We’re not only living in […]
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Western Religion
SCOTUS: Corporate “Persons” have Religions, can Deny You Birth Control Coverage
By Mindy Fischer On Monday the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Hobby Lobby case. They ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporations who have religious objections to birth control no longer have to pay for insurance coverage of those contraceptives, as mandated under Obamacare. This decision actually marks the first time that […]
Unconstitutional: Top 4 Ways the US Gov’t has Shredded the 4th Amendment
By Peter Van Buren Here’s a bit of history from another America: the Bill of Rights was designed to protect the people from their government. If the First Amendment’s right to speak out publicly was the people’s wall of security, then the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy was its buttress. It was once thought that the government […]
In American Turning Point re: Settler Zionism, Presbyterians Divest
By Andrea Germanos "Divestment is not the end, it’s the beginning of non-violent means to fight the oppression of our Palestinian brothers and sisters," said Ruling Elder Rick Ufford-Chase. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted on Friday to divest from U.S. companies linked to Israel's occupation of Palestine. The vote by the church's General Assembly passed […]
How Reagan subverted the meaning of D-Day & the New Deal of the Greatest Generation
The following is an excerpt from Harvey J. Kaye’s The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great (Simon & Schuster, 2014). On June 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan went to Normandy, France, to speak at events…
On D-Day: Remembering the Muslim Troops who Fought the Axis
By Juan Cole One of the frustrations for a world historian is the unyieldingly parochial vision of the North Atlantic common among journalists and even many historians, and consequently among the public. The 17 world leaders gathering for the D-Day commemoration should by all rights include Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Indian Prime Minister Narendra […]
Facial Hair, Patriotism and the Enemy in American History
By Juan Cole Media Matters for America put together a collage of Fox Cable News commentators smearing the father of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl as having a Taliban-like beard and maybe even being a Taliban sympathizer. Thanks to MM4A for the Laura Ingram clip in which she says that if he weren’t so light-skinned he could […]
Pastor Hagee: It’s not Climate Change, It’s The Return Of Christ
Matthew Hagee, son of fire and brimstone preacher John Hagee, says don’t believe those climate scientists who say things that are against the Bible, and this against the word of God. What the changes in climate mean is that Jesus is coming. And soon…
Donald Sterling’s Illiberal Zionism Part of Racism Controversy with Magic Johnson
(By Juan Cole) Major political ideas and philosophies are complex and ambiguous, not straightforward. American conservatism is an alliance of economic conservatives and cultural conservatives. Economic conservatives are champions of entrepreneurs and business, seeking low taxes and little regulation and opportunity for risk-takers from all persons of all backgrounds. Their ideology contains contradictions. Economic conservatives […]