History

Keeping Courage, Resisting Groupthink: The Great Escape of Mary Queen of Scots 2
- History, Culture, Featured
- October 24, 2024
For a teenage boy like Willy Douglas, there was bound to be something appealing about the tall, beautiful, spirited, and forsaken 24-year-old queen imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, which lay on an island in the middle of a gray lake in lowland Scotland. Is it any wonder that 16-year-old Willy and his 18-year-old cousin George set
READ MORE
Why Dengism Matters for America 2
- History, Featured, Politics
- October 21, 2024
Former Chinese dictator Deng Xiaoping is little known in the West, but his ideas should be common knowledge. He developed a new political-economic model for China, one often called “authoritarian developmentalism,” that helped hundreds of millions of people escape grinding poverty. However, “Dengism” maintained the Communist Party’s firm grip on society—and Western countries are starting
READ MORE
Islam Is Biased Toward Arabs. Why?3
- Religion, Featured, History
- October 16, 2024
Most Muslims in the world today are non-Arabs. It’s an ironic fact, given that Islam and Arab chauvinism are inseparable. Even though it’s not well-known, Islamic history paints a clear picture: Islam elevates Arabs over others. The Beginnings of Arab Chauvinism To see this, we have to go back to the 600s and the Arab
READ MORE

The American and French Revolutions Compared 3
- History
- October 4, 2024
One of the many differences between the American and French Revolutions is that, unlike the French, Americans did not fight for an abstraction. Americans initially took up arms against the British to defend and preserve the traditional rights of Englishmen. The slogan “no taxation without representation” aptly summed up one of their chief complaints. The
READ MORE
Purposeless Masculinity in Beryl Bainbridge’s ‘The Birthday Boys’1
- Featured, History, Literature
- October 2, 2024
In the face of certain death, does being civilized matter? All the narrators of Beryl Bainbridge’s 1991 historical novel The Birthday Boys die. And still, knowing their deaths loom, they carry on with birthdays, religious practices, and virtues like loyalty and courage. Heavily based on real life diaries and letters, this novel is a hybrid
READ MORE
Is Islam Really the ‘Religion of Peace’?6
- History, Featured, Religion
- September 23, 2024
It’s not politically correct to think that some cultures, religions, and traditions are better than others. And perhaps even more taboo is the topic of Islam—and its historical record compared to Christianity, particularly when the two religions come to clash. It’s worth asking, then, what do history and data have to say on the topic?
READ MORE