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Category: History

  • The Left, the Right and the Wrong Side of History

    By Selwyn Duke It’s always amusing when secularists speak of traditionalists being on the “wrong side of history.” We heard this recently after the vote in North Carolina upholding marriage; liberals said that the state was on the wrong side of history. Now, these people are circling around something that is absolutely true, and it's…

  • If Republicans Want to Win, They Must Shed the Communist-inspired Word “Capitalism”

    By Selwyn Duke One of the simplest rhetorical truths is that the side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate.  Yet, amazingly, we still see experienced conservative politicians with access to advanced polling operations and an array of advisors use the Lexicon of the Left.  And this election cycle is no exception.…

  • Silly Things We Hear: “Communism Works on Paper”

    By Selwyn Duke While discussing on The View recently how North Korean heir Kim Jong Un enjoyed the luxury of being sent to a Swiss boarding school, Whoopi Goldberg said the following, “This is what happens with communism. It’s a great concept; on paper it makes perfect sense. But once you put a human being in…

  • The Myth of Fascism

    By Selwyn Duke Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “History is a series of agreed-upon myths.” I’m not quite that cynical, but our history books do sometimes seem more like mythology than reality. In fact, in school we don’t even call the subject “history” anymore but “social studies” (socialist studies?). Yes, the victors write the history, and…

  • When love was a warm toy gun

    By Selwyn Duke In a way, commercials can tell you more about how we've changed than history books. The other day I came across the following 1960s TV commercial on YouTube; it's for a toy set called the "Gung Ho Commando Outfit" by Marx. And it's a perfect snapshot of the America that, sadly, no…

  • New American Cover Story: Multiculturalism

    By Selwyn Duke It is 1991, and Yugoslavia, born of the ashes of WWI, is starting to break up. It is a violent affair that will be long, painful, bloody, and complex. Numerous wars in the multi-ethnic region will be fought, with Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia declaring independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia and, in turn, Serb…

  • Noam Chomsky Gets Half a Clue

    By Selwyn Duke Of all idiots, none is so useful as he who can masquerade as a genius. MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky recently denounced Hugo Chavez, accusing the Venezuelan strongman of making an “assault” on his nation’s democracy and of cruelty with respect to a female judge he imprisoned for issuing an unwelcome ruling. …

  • U.S. Students Ignorant of History; Will Repeat Mistakes of Past

    By Selwyn Duke Once again, a study has show that American students are woefully ignorant of history. Test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress demonstrate, writes the Wall Street Journal, that only “20% of U.S. fourth-graders and 17% of eighth-graders who took the 2010 history exam were ‘proficient’ or ‘advanced’…” and only 12…

  • Gandhi Reconsidered: When Paganism Met Progressivism

    By Selwyn Duke When an Indian-born man I knew a couple of decades ago expressed an intense dislike for Mohandas Gandhi, I found it a bit surprising. Wasn’t the “Great Soul,” that quintessential 20th-century icon, India’s George Washington? That certainly is the narrative created by historians — who, history has taught us, can tell a…

  • Chinese Segregation: No Caucasian Mummies Need Apply

    By Selwyn Duke The Chinese exhibition “Secrets of the Silk Road” ran without incident in California and Texas. But now Chinese authorities have decided that parts of it really must be kept secret and have ordered that some artifacts and, most notably, a certain mummy not be displayed. The news came as a blow to…