Optimistic, Pessimistic About 2024? Whatever Happens, It’s Not Inevitable

Happy New Year! I’ve spent a lot of time pondering whether 2024 will be an extraordinarily good year or an extraordinarily bad year. Whatever happens, I tend to believe it will be a historic turning point for the United States and possibly the world. “The future is never inevitable,” historian Heather Cox Richardson observed in an interview …

Ancestor-Worship: Very Popular

I reflect on the phenomenon of ancestor-worship, which seems to be particularly popular among old people who intently trace their ancestry online. Why is it so popular? I have some ideas. See my Substack article: https://jimbuie.substack.com/p/ancestor-worship

American Imperialist Beliefs in the Late 1800s: Pro and Con

Students should read the following documents and list on a chart the key arguments of the imperialists/expansionists, to prepare for debates. Two "Pro" Arguments (Pro-Imperialist) "The US Looking Outwards" by Alfred Thayer Mahan, 1890, The Atlantic. He was a United States naval officer and historian, whom John Keegan called "the most important American strategist of …

MLK: ‘I’m So Glad I Didn’t Sneeze’ Because I Got to Live Longer And Participate in a Great Movement

Excerpts from this speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 3, 1968, the night before he was killed, have particular resonance to the concept that "slender threads" shape history and our personal lives. He carried with him a sense of the fragility of life, a historical perspective and a sense of gratitude about …

Meditation on Alexandre Dumas’ Concepts of ‘Slender Threads’, ‘Fortune’, Fate and Destiny

"Oh what slender threads do life and fortune hang," observed Alexandre Dumas in the Count of Monte Cristo. The concept of "fortune," akin to fate, destiny, societies' stability or instability, divine providence, God's will, envy, revenge, justice and injustice, accident of birth and social class were themes that Dumas addressed in the novel. But these …

Is Society About to Fall Apart?

"How do we know when society is about to fall apart?" asked Ben Ehrenreich in the NYT Magazine. "Meet the scholars who study civilizational collapse." Ehrenreich is the author of "Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time." Bringing together climate science, mythologies, nature writing, and personal experiences, he "presents a stunning reckoning …

Alexander Hamilton’s Truly Miraculous Rise from Orphan in Caribbean to Founding Father

I am reading Ron Chernow's remarkable biography of Alexander Hamilton, and am awestruck by what AH endured in his early life to become one of America's founding fathers. It is both a tribute to Hamilton and to America that his rise was even possible. What is shocking is not that he died in a duel …

Why Did the Ottoman Empire Fail? Power Vacuums. They Still Haunt the Middle East

Quite a number of students in the United Arab Emirates had been taught the facile notion that the 600-year Ottoman Empire ultimately failed because "it abandoned Allah and Islam" and therefore Allah in turn no longer offered protection. This is not too different from the American students who "explained" the collapse of the Roman Empire …

Non-violence, Peace Movements Were Major 20th Century Influence

Often over-looked in the history of the world since 1900 were the triumph of philosophies of non-violence, civil disobedience against unjust laws, and peace movements. Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Richard Gregg, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. had an enormous impact, and continue to do so. These movements, which elevate the noble ideas that …

Killing Masses of Humans: Disease, Drought, Famine and Climate Change Can Result in End of Civilizations

Disease, or epidemics, may have been one reason the Roman Empire fell in the 400s. It (specifically small pox) certainly was the main reason for wiping out 90 percent of the Native American population of North American before 1800. In the above Crash Course video, "John Green teaches you about disease, and the effects that …