Free Republic

There is much to learn from Paul Johnson's history of the 20th century, not least the appalling truth about the "Republican" camp during the Spanish Civil War; some unpalatable facts about FDR and his "vanity … compounded by an astonishing naivety"; and, most importantly, the many ways in which the autocrats of the left (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc…) and of the right (Hitler, Mussolini, Pétain, etc…) inspired, complemented, and even conspired with, one another. Much of what we have learned turns out to be myths. What explains the rise of rightist fascism, and how does it differ from leftist communism?...

There's no thinker more valuable than a good historian and nothing reminds us more of that than the passing of the great historian, Paul Johnson, who did so much to define history as we know it and love it. Oh, that's so grand sounding, though -- Paul Johnson's histories were utterly delicious to read, better than movies or other things billed as entertainment. You read one and just wanted to go buy another. I read nearly all of them, and still want to read them again. I never met him but I never wanted him to die, not ever, I...

Paul Johnson, the prolific journalist, historian, biographer, speechwriter and novelist whose public conversion in 1977 from Labour Party stalwart to bulldog defender of Margaret Thatcher and conservatism made him a divisive figure in British literary circles, died on Thursday at his home in London. He was 94. His son Daniel announced the death, “after a long illness,” on Twitter. A writer of immense range and output, capable of 6,000 words a day when in harness, Mr. Johnson modeled his career after earlier English men of letters, like Thomas Babington Macaulay and G.K. Chesterton. With an affable prose style and supreme...

Paul Johnson says, in his biography of Washington, that in 1789, the only monarch with powers as wide as the president's was the czar. All the other ones were hemmed in by regulations. Johnson doesn't go too far into detail about it, but why take his word when we can see it right in front of us? In the last eight years, we found that the president can put grown men into little girls' locker rooms; that he can pay enemy states hundreds of billions in ransom cash; that he can flood our states with millions of Africans and Middle...

THE MENTAL INFECTION known as “political correctness” is one of the most dangerous intellectual afflictions ever to attack mankind... ....it’s good news that Donald Trump is doing so well in the American political primaries. He is vulgar, abusive, nasty, rude, boorish and outrageous. He is also saying what he thinks and, more important, teaching Americans how to think for themselves again. No one could be a bigger contrast to the spineless, pusillanimous and underdeserving Barack Obama, who has never done a thing for himself and is entirely the creation of reverse discrimination. Under Obama the U.S.–by far the richest and...

Paul Johnson doesn't suffer from PDS like some others. Rather he sees Sarah Palin as a courageous leader and likes "the cut of her jib." The celebrated British historian and journalist Paul Johnson expounded on American exceptionalism, the Tea Party and Sarah Palin in a Wall Street Journal interview this past Saturday. He's optimistic about this "marvelous country" and its ability to overcome the forces working to undermine its greatness. Johnson specifically credits conservative women as key players in shaping a new direction for the country in 2012. Interviewed in his West London home the prolific author offered a buoyant,...

Eminent historian Paul Johnson on Sarah Palin, the tea party, and 'baddies' from Napoleon to Gadhafi. In his best-selling history of the 20th century, "Modern Times," British historian Paul Johnson describes "a significant turning-point in American history: the first time the Great Republic, the richest nation on earth, came up against the limits of its financial resources." Until the 1960s, he writes in a chapter titled "America's Suicide Attempt," "public finance was run in all essentials on conventional lines"—that is to say, with budgets more or less in balance outside of exceptional circumstances. "The big change in principle came under...

SNIP I visited the 82-year-old Mr. Johnson in his West London home this week to ask him whether America has once again set off down the path to self-destruction. Is he worried about America's future? "Of course I worry about America," he says. "The whole world depends on America ultimately, particularly Britain. And also, I love America—a marvelous country. But in a sense I don't worry about America because I think America has such huge strengths—particularly its freedom of thought and expression—that it's going to survive as a top nation for the foreseeable future. And therefore take care of the...

The other main area of lying [besides health] centered on [John F. Kennedy's] curriculum vitae. In 1940 his thesis was written for him by a number of people, including Arthur Krock of the New York Times, and Joe's personal speechwriter, who described it as a 'very sloppy job, mostly magazine and newspaper clippings stuck together.' But, processed, it not only allowed Jack to graduate cum laude but also appeared in book form as Why England Slept. Old Joe and his men turned it into a 'bestseller,' partly by using influence with publishers such as Henry Luce, partly by buying 30,000-40,000...

American politicians, in dealing with Britain and continental Europe, have been accustomed to drawing a distinction symbolized by the English Channel: In Britain they found politics to be honest; on the Continent a varying level of corruption was endemic, with it being less pronounced in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, more so in France and Spain and the most in Italy and Greece. This distinction no longer applies, and it is a point President Obama should note. British politics are becoming corrupt. This is partly because of the deleterious effects of membership in the European Community and Parliament. But there are...

Current Events Glad Bush Is Still AroundPaul Johnson 05.05.08, 12:00 AM ET I don't regard George W. Bush as a lame-duck president. Between now and next January all sorts of challenging and unexpected events may take place. We can rely on President Bush to react promptly and decisively to them.We saw this on Sept. 11. The President was as surprised as everyone else, as we grasped from the dramatic photograph of him taken as he was given the dreadful news at an elementary school. But he buckled down quickly to this unprecedented attack on America, determined that such a treacherous...

An intellectual is someone who thinks ideas matter more than people. If people get in the way of ideas they must be swept aside and, if necessary, put in concentration camps or killed. To intellectuals, individuals as such are not interesting and do not matter. Indeed individualism is a hindrance to the pursuit of ideals in an absolute sense. The individual, with his quirks and quiddities, his mixture of good and bad, intelligence and stupidity, longing for justice but anxiety to promote his own selfish interests, does not fit into a utopian community. Hence utopians, if they are in earnest,...

Heroes: What Great Statesmen Have to Teach Usby Paul Johnson, Historian   PAUL JOHNSON is the author of several bestselling books, including the classic Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, A History of the American People, A History of Christianity, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky, A History of the Jews, Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney, Art: A New History, George Washington: The Founding Father, and most recently, Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including...

One thing history teaches is the transience and futility of power, and the ultimate impotence of those who exercise it. That is the lesson of the current King Tut exhibition. No group of sovereigns ever enjoyed the illusion of power more than the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, especially those of the 18th and 19th dynasties. Rameses II spent much of his 66 years on the throne having immense images of himself displayed everywhere from Luxor to Abu Simbel, and many remain, chipped and crumbling. Nothing else. The point is admirably made in Shelley's sonnet about him, 'Ozymandias'. I once...

Whatever you may think of President George W. Bush and his record, there's no denying him one character trait: courage. He has never been deterred from doing what he believes to be right by fear or nervousness. And courage, as we constantly need remind ourselves, is indispensable to successful statesmanship. It may be that Mr. Bush will need to display a supreme act of courage before leaving the White House: to decide what the U.S. response will be to Iran's efforts to acquire an aggressive nuclear capability. This should not be left for Mr. Bush's successor to deal with early...

America is the reluctant sheriff of a wild world that sometimes seems mired in wrongdoing. The UN has nothing to offer in the way of enforcing laws and dispensing justice, other than spouting pious oratory and initiating feeble missions that usually do more harm than good. NATO plays a limited role, as in Afghanistan, but tends to reflect the timidity (and cowardice) of Continental Europe. Britain and a few other nations such as Australia are willing to follow America's lead but are too weak to act on their own. That leaves the U.S. to shoulder the responsibility. Otherwise — what?...

Contrary to what you learned at college, America from its inception has been a religious country, and was designed to be one. As the greatest foreign observer of America, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, noted in his "Democracy in America," "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power." Or, as the great British historian Paul Johnson has just written: "In [George] Washington's eyes, at least, America was in no sense a secular state," and "the American Revolution was in essence the political...

How long will Darwin continue to repose on his high but perilous pedestal? I am beginning to wonder. Few people doubt the principles of evolution. The question at issue is: are all evolutionary advances achieved exclusively by the process of natural selection? That is the position of the Darwinian fundamentalists, and they cling to their absolutist position with all the unyielding certitude with which Southern Baptists assert the literal truth of the Book of Genesis, or Wahabi Muslims proclaim the need for a universal jihad against ‘the Great Satan’. At a revivalist meeting of Darwinians two or three years ago,...

Current Events Prayer in the White House Paul Johnson, 11.28.05, 12:00 AM ET President Bush has recently stated that he prayed to God for advice on his Iraq policy. Should an American President pray before taking important risks? Is a God-fearing and God-consulting President more desirable than an entirely secular one who is guided purely by expert advice and realpolitik? As Sherlock Holmes would say, "These are deep waters, Watson." Most American Presidents have believed in God and prayed accordingly in moments of crisis. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, was not a regular Christian by most standards, but the record suggests...

Current Events Anti-Americanism Is Racist Envy Paul Johnson, 07.21.03, 12:00 AM ET Anti-Americanism is the prevailing disease of intellectuals today. Like other diseases, it doesn't have to be logical or rational. But, like other diseases, it has a syndrome--a concurrent set of underlying symptoms that are also causes. • First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy. The U.S. is the world's most successful democracy. The right of voters to elect more than 80,000 public officials, the length and thoroughness of electoral campaigns, the pervasiveness of the media and the almost daily reports by opinion polls ensure that government and electorate do...