History That Matters Now Archives - KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show

So many mass shootings; how did the gun culture become so powerful? Look to the Civil War. Militarily devastated, the Confederate culture transformed guns into a totem. In this revealing discussion, U of Wisconsin-Madison professor Nick Buttrick reveals the roots

The post Slave States and Today’s Gun Culture appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Democracy and oligarchy: since our founding it’s been a long balancing act. In his new book Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy, author historian Timothy Shenk tells of how very diverse people like Mark

The post The Struggle to Rule American Democracy appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

With renewed interest in the first world war, November 11 is celebrated as the end of “the war to end all wars.” But in reality it was a peace that ended peace. The German negotiators at that famous train car

The post 11/11 Armistice? Germans Ambushed, A Peace That Ended Peace appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

It’s echoing everywhere: Trump was the biggest loser of the 2022 elections. Recorded two days after the votes, our guest today, veteran political news person John Kosinski sees what so unexpectedly happened as a wake up call. Could it be

The post Instead of a Red Wave, One of Common Sense? appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

America today is not the America of the past. But in his new book What it Took to Win, author and history professor  Michael Kazin, it’s clear what has and still works.  Today’s right plays on a sense that it

The post Wake Up Now Democrats! Do What History Shows Works! appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Of all the motivations for war, nostalgia is at the top. Longing for an imagined glorious past. We see it not only in Ukraine but in many former empires, like France. And this nostalgia plays itself out in racist nationalist

The post The Murderous Power of Imperial Nostalgia appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

It’s the bedrock of who we are today. But to believe there was agreement among the “Founding Fathers” to replace plutocracy with democracy is just wrong. A lot of the answers as to where we find ourselves today, good and

The post Behind the Neat Myth of the American Revolution appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Shock Therapy. That was the US policy toward Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. That brought economic anarchy, a real depression, and the clamoring for a strongman government. And today we see the results. According to our guest

The post We Missed it: An Opportunity For a Stable Russia appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

As with many success stories, an impoverished, unknown yet powerful woman made it happen. In his new book, The First Kennedys, The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty author Neal Thompson tells us about the Ireland they fled and the

The post How The Kennedys Came to Be Dynasty appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

There used to be a long held American tradition of opposition to colonialism and that government served the common good. FDR’s vice president Henry A Wallace was an outstanding visionary. Then a corrupt political machine performed a bloodless coup at

The post A Successful Coup in 1944 America appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.