When “1984” was just fiction.
Remember when 1984 was fiction, and a year so far in the future when George Orwell published his novel in 1949 that it seemed impossible? The CIA smuggled copies behind the…
Read MoreAIN’T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND
My final edition No, not of this blog but as the editor of B’nai B’rith Magazine, the eclectic Jewish magazine I’ve been proud to helm for 16 years. The current…
Read MorePresident Garfield is having a moment. It’s about time!
He was the 20th president, whose short time in office was cut even shorter by an assassin’s bullet. President James A. Garfield has long been forgotten and ignored — until…
Read MoreHave you no sense of decency?
Americans were glued to their black and white TV sets for the 34 days of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, at the height of the red-baiting McCarthy era. An estimated…
Read More166 years later, John Brown’s soul goes marching on.
One hundred and sixty-six years ago this weekend, abolitionist John Brown led a small band of 18 men to the federal arsenal town of Harpers Ferry at the confluence of…
Read MoreMy Lai, William Calley, Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump
More than half a century ago, the military prosecuted and convicted Lt. William Calley for the murder of “not less than 22” unarmed Vietnamese in the hamlet of My Lai…
Read More“Pioneers of the Press”
Pioneers of the Press. A book–and a legacy to honor and uphold Sixty-five years ago, my father Gerard Previn Meyer wrote a book called “Pioneers of the Press.” The publisher…
Read MoreHiroshima, the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets and Me
December 7, 1941, was, declared President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “a date which will live in infamy,” when Japanese planes attacked and destroyed the U.S. naval fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor,…
Read MoreMorton Mintz, R.I.P. and Washington Post Buyouts Then and Now
My friend Mort Mintz died this week at 103. Fittingly, the Washington Post, where we were colleagues for many years, gave him a nice obit, starting on the Metro news…
Read MoreThe Conscience of a Conservative
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” This declaration seems uncannily relevant today, when our liberties are under assault…
Read More