RealClearHistory Articles

The French and Indian War ended with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, with Britain receiving all French and Spanish-claimed territories between the Mississippi River and the British-American Colonies. Afterwards, the British instilled the Proclamation Line of 1763, a boundary along the Appalachian Mountains to prevent Colonists from expanding westward into Native lands. Instead, many Colonists migrated into Native lands, including veterans who were promised frontier land grants for their service before the Proclamation Line was announced. Consequently,...

President’s Day is often treated as a generic celebration of presidents – or, more commonly, as a convenient sales event marking the approach of spring. The modern observance, falling between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, has become a combined civic ritual that tends to flatten the distinct stature of each. In that reduction, something essential has been lost. The day was not created to promote consumption or to blur distinct lives into an amorphous narrative. Nor was it meant to compress the memory of the presidency itself into a single interchangeable...

The cult of personality: a quippy term to describe how a strongman cultivates his followers to see him as powerful, knowledgeable, and protective. Such rulers and their techniques are as old as recorded history – among the oldest of is Ramses II, who ruled as the pharaoh of Egypt for 66 years, 1279-1213 B.C. Ramses' rule as pharaoh was marked by military campaigns along Egypt's borders. His earliest success was to defeat pirates that had been attacking ships along Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Later in his rule, he conducted successful military campaigns to control Egypt's southern and...

Before the founding of Israel, the Galilee, stretching from the Litani River in the North to the Jezreel Valley in the South, was a quiet region split between Mandatory Palestine and Lebanon. Largely populated by a mix of Jews, Shias, and Sunnis, the region was far away from administrative centers and life was shaped by kinship and survival.  Today, the Galilee is split between a Jewish Israel and Shia South Lebanon, and has been subject to sporadic conflicts between the State of Israel and Shia Islamist Hezbollah since the 1980s. Spurred by the Khomeinist ideology of the Iranian regime,...

With The Silent Service’s First Hero, Ryan Walker gives Naval History lovers something special: The story of a man who defined humble hero, a look at the pre-WWII submarine community, and a masterclass on historical research and writing all in one. While The Silent Service’s First Hero isn’t the traditional biography most readers may expect, Walker’s work certainly doesn’t disappoint. Well-researched and formatted, the microhistory approach rebuilds the world sailor Henry Breault once lived in. Walker uses Breault’s relationships with family...

At Westminster Abbey, over 1,000 years of Christian observance and British royal ceremony are enshrined within a set of medieval walls. After a millennium, the Abbey exerts a powerful hold on British and world public imagination, as a spectacular venue for royal and national services and commemorations. The Abbey remains among the UK’s top visitor attractions: 1.7 million tourists to London encountered its treasures in 2024. May 2026 marks a dramatic anniversary for this venerable institution. Eighty-five years ago – in May 1941 – Westminster Abbey faced a moment...

Many opponents of so-called Bolivarian socialism welcomed the capture and arrest of Nicholas Maduro. Yet, while rejoicing in the fall of a tyrant, one cannot help but share an important observation: the liquidation of a leadership through external intervention does not automatically mean a change in the regime or the country's trajectory of development. The example of Iraq – which, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, collapsed into the chaos of ISIS and then effectively fell under Iranian influence – is a clear confirmation of this. One can only hope that Venezuela does not...

America’s foremost heroes are cowboys, soldiers, and innovators. They imposed order on the Wild West. They showed courage on countless battlefields and saved civilization in the Second World War. Armed with a vision for the future and their own two hands, they overpowered a dark and forbidding wilderness to create our modern world. We memorialize their great deeds because strong men inspire strong reactions. In 1841, Americans were aghast when sculptor Horatio Greenough unveiled the naked splendor of his 12-ton Enthroned Washington, a marble tribute to the Nation’s father and...

Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers, many have designated September 11, 2001 as the true close of the 20th century. That event indeed changed many things in the United States and in the world. It was a sign that the American-led global order established after World War II had become fragile and hollowed out. But in the decades that followed, our leaders clung to the pieties and perspectives of the pre-9/11 period, applying obsolete solutions in a new era with much different problems. In retrospect, Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign was the true start of...

On December 7, 1941, Americans awoke to a quiet Sunday that would end in war. Sixty years later, on another unremarkable morning, I walked into my unit to sign in. By the time the second tower fell, that moment off routine had become the beginning of a very different history. Pearl Harbor showed my grandfather’s generation how quickly clarity replaces complacency. On 9/11, I learned the same. The young officers who reported for duty after Pearl Harbor did not expect war that morning. Nor did my fellow lieutenants on 9/11. What both generations learned, in real time and sometimes the...

When politicians invoke “America First” today, they echo arguments first championed by Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., U.S. ambassador to Britain in 1940. Kennedy believed aiding allies would weaken American strength, entangle the United States in conflicts it could not win, and ultimately threaten the nation’s survival. His defeatism during the Blitz, and his open clashes with Franklin Roosevelt, foreshadowed a struggle that still shapes U.S. strategy: whether America’s security lies in global leadership or in isolationism. In the fall of 1940, as German bombs fell on...

Ken Khachigian, 81, of Orange County, California, was in the room with Reagan and Nixon. In the fall of 1967, Khachigian was a second-year law student at Columbia University when he wrote a letter to Richard Nixon at his New York law office to volunteer for his presidential campaign. He was hired by Patrick J. Buchanan as an aide and assistant before joining the Nixon White House as a junior speechwriter. After Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Khachigian followed the “Old Man” to his Western White House in San Clemente, where Khachigian helped Nixon compose RN: The Memoirs of...

People may think the 2020s in America seem like strange times, but 1881 could give it a run for its money. A corrupt Vice President, Chester Arthur, ascended to the highest office in the land after a disgruntled madman shot President James Garfield. It’s a wild story that, nearly 150 years later, has slipped out of our collective memory. Netflix has resurrected this drama and its aftermath with a limited series called Death by Lightning. Though as is common for any dramatization of real events, not everything shown on screen is true to history. As a filmmaker who spent the past two...

Americans love to be outraged. Our identity is endowed with a consistent distrust, if not vitriolic animosity, towards both government and the conditions detrimental to everyday life which the government has failed to address. Whether it be in politics or business, there is little consideration for the severity of this hatred or even the influence and power of the entity that we are disposed to hate. It is a deeply rooted, instinctual exercise in what it means to be an American. In no other nation on earth can a school board administrator be expected to face as much enmity as a candidate for...

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, the guns went quiet. November 11 began as silence, not spectacle—but with ears still ringing from years of constant barrages. What we first called Armistice Day became Veterans Day a generation later, widening the circle from one war to all who wore the uniform. We’ve tinkered with the calendar, but meaning lives in the day itself. In 1954, Congress formally renamed Armistice Day to Veterans Day; in 1978 the holiday returned to November 11 after a brief Monday move.  That origin matters. Veterans Day isn’t a scoreboard for...

Donald Trump put things at the center of conservative politics. Since the 1950s, conservative intellectuals have championed individual liberty, limited government, and free markets as integral to the American way of life. Libertarians defended liberty from the encroachment of the state. Traditionalists urged a return to Judeo-Christian beliefs and Western values. Neoconservatives argued against the expansion of Communist ideologies. And, later, fusionists sought to combine these currents into a single ideology. Together, conservative thinkers and politicians sought to pay a...

Stock markets around the world are surging because of two things: an expected interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve and an AI investment boom. But neither of these things necessarily signal actual strength in the economy. Interest rates are set by the Federal Reserve, which is supposed to be completely independent from the legislative and executive branches. When the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913, it was carefully set up to be free from political control, as politicians would be tempted to expand the money supply in order to give the economy a short-run boost to help their political...

This is not a dream. It isn’t some nightmare from which we can awaken to find our friend alive and well. No.  This is a hero’s tale - one of a brave knight on a perilous journey who entered the battle and fought gloriously until his last breath. Our friend is dead.  That reality cannot be changed, no matter how much we wish it.  But, like all good fairytales, it is only the beginning of Charlie Kirk’s story. Like Arthur before he became King of Camelot working as a lowly squire for Sir Kay, 17 year-old Charlie was, not long ago, just an enthusiastic high...

Earlier this month, the hashtag #trumpisdead went viral on X, and the term “TRUMP DIED” earned millions of likes and views online. Anonymous left-wing social media accounts likely planted the rumor of Trump’s death, which similarly inclined journalists then amplified to create a “permission structure” to write about his demise. What they don’t understand is that Donald Trump will never die. Can a living man become a monument? Yes—if that man is Donald Trump. Traditional monuments include grand examples such as the Lincoln Memorial,...