A Friend in the White House

Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem

Over the course of the Reagan presidency, those who had written for National Review and Commentary shifted from their roles as policy analysts to putting their policy recommendations into practice as members of the foreign, domestic, and speechwriting staff in the Reagan administration. Figures like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Carl Gershman, Aram Bakshian, Anthony Dolan, and many others played a key role in the creation of one of the most ideological administrations in recent memory. While neither William F. Buckley Jr. nor Norman Podhoretz had active roles in the administration, their influence was nonetheless felt as those who had worked for them utilized their ideas and language in helping construct a consistent ideology that played a significant role in how rhetoric was designed and policy was implemented.

2018 ◽  
pp. 223-242
Author(s):  
Umberto Tulli

The chapter aims at investigating the role of the Reagan administration in organizing the Games. Contrary to previous understanding, which tend to dismiss federal government involvment in the organization of the Games, it will highlight the political and diplomatic actions undertaken by the Reagan administration to organize a perfect edition of the Olympics and to sell the world reaganism through the Los Angeles Games. Since the creation of an Olympic task force within the White House, the Los Angeles Games were perceived as a showcase on Ronald Reagan's America. The task force immediately concluded that the federal government would act behind the scenes, providing all the necessary security measures for the LAOOC and the Games, coordinating diplomatic actions and looking over consular practices. Tasks increased when the Soviets announced their boycott: the White House defined a clear damage-limiting strategy. In its conclusions, the chapter will discuss a sort of paradox: the Reagan administration was increasingly involved in the promotion of what it presented as a government-free edition of the Olympics.


LingVaria ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
pp. 205-217
Author(s):  
Mirosław Skarżyński

Contributions to the History of the Society of Friends of the Polish LanguageTowarzystwo Miłośników Języka Polskiego (‘Society of Friends of the Polish Language’) is the oldest such society and greatly distinguished for the popularization of knowledge about the language, and also for the knowledge about Polish itself. The few publications devoted to it, written mostly on the occasion of anniversaries, tend to overlook the figure of Andrzej Gawroński (1885–1927), an outstanding expert in Sanskrit, a linguist, and a professor of the Lviv University, despite the fact that archive materials show that he played a very significant role in the creation of the Society, and even penned the preliminary version of its charter. This paper presents Gawroński’s part in the forming of TMJP; it is based on extant letters from A. Gawroński to Kazimierz Nitsch from years 1919–1921 (Archive of Science of PAN and PAU in Cracow), letters from K. Nitsch to linguists Henryk Ułaszyn and Antonina Obrębska-Jabłońska, and also on the few printed materials from years 1918–1927.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Shutek

This paper argues that images, and specifically agricultural images, play a significant role in the imaginings of the Israeli and Palestinian communities. Agriculture has symbolic and material value among Palestinians and Israelis, and contributes to identities and land claims made by Zionist and Palestinian organizations. Anderson’s discussion of nation building emphasizes the primacy of print in the imagination of a community; this paper highlights non-textual elements of nation building via case studies of the creation and dissemination of propaganda posters by the Jewish National Fund and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A survey of propagandistic agricultural images reveals the shared symbols used by Palestinians and Israelis in forging identities and exclusive claims to land. Despite being common symbols from a shared past, agricultural images are crucial in creating and perpetuating a divide between Israelis and Palestinians, and in arguing for organic links between each group and the land of Palestine-Israel.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
German Gigolaev

The USA, as well as the USSR, initiated the convocation of the III UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (1973—1982). However, after the Ronald Reagan administration came to the White House, American diplomacy significantly changed its policy toward the Conference, which eventually resulted in US refusal to support the draft Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was worked out during the Conference. This behavior was in line with policy course of the Reagan administration — more aggressive than that of their predecessors. The article considers the American policy regarding Law of the Sea negotiations in the first months of Reagan's presidency, during the Tenth Session of the III UNCLOS.


Author(s):  
Kevin M. Baron

This chapter delves into the depths of one of the most important developments within modern American politics, the creation and institutionalization of executive privilege. In facing a fervent Congress in the grips of McCarthyism, Eisenhower issued a letter denying testimony to the Senate for the Army-McCarthy hearings. His letter included a memo from Attorney General Brownell that claimed the president had an inherent constitutional privilege to deny information to Congress or the public if it was in the public interest and for national security. This action institutionalized the Cold War Paradigm in the executive branch and created an extra-constitutional power for the president. Eisenhower issued several executive orders concerning classification and public dissemination of government information, along with the creation of the Office of Strategic Information (OSI) within the Commerce Department to oversee these policies. Eisenhower claimed historic precedent to justify his inherent constitutional power, regardless, it showed a learned response that changed executive power. Congress would respond in 1955 by creating the Special Subcommittee on Government Information chaired by Rep. John Moss, given jurisdiction for oversight on all executive branch information policies and practices. With the issue of freedom of information institutionalized in Congress, a 12-year legislative power struggle would unfold between Congress and the White House ending with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1966.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Kuznetsova ◽  

As it noted by the researchers, the “Song of fate” accumulates painful thoughts of A.A. Blok about the fate of Russia and about his personal fate associat ed with the past, present and future of the Motherland. In addition to the ideological problems raised in it, the poem is interesting in an attempt to escape from the specifics of historical and national-cultural realities through their symbolization, combining the plans of life and being. The white house with a garden on the hill, in which the action of the play begins and the return to which is implied at the end, incorporates the most important features of Russia as a cultural, natural and spiritual space. The world of the estate is opposed by the space of the modern city and the big world of Russian open spaces. However, the estate for Blok is Russia the same. Therefore, Elena, the keeper of the estate, and Faina, the personalization of the world element, are two parts of one whole, as if the projection of an ideal Russia. The plot of the “Song of fate”, accord ing to D.M. Magomedova, I.S. Prikhodko, etc., is an artistic realization of the Gnostic myth of the captive Sophia, the Soul of the world. The imposition of the Gnostic myth in the “Song of fate” on the entire existing in Russian literature of the XIX century poetosphere of the estate leads to the creation of the author’s myth about Russia, the transformation of poetosphere in the mythopoetics.


2019 ◽  
pp. 180-197
Author(s):  
Gregory Treverton

A friend who had been deputy national intelligence officer when Gregory Treverton was vice-chairman under Joseph Nye cautioned him that “this is not your father’s National Intelligence Council”. And indeed it wasn’t. Substantively, the biggest change was in mission—the enormous addition of current intelligence support to the government’s policy committees. That meant the NIC was in the thick of things, but it also meant than finding time for more strategic work was a constant frustration—all in the context of an administration trying to cope with crises from Ukraine to ISIS, from Afghanistan to Ebola. Procedurally, the biggest change was the creation, first of the director of national intelligence, and later of the national intelligence managers. The latter, especially, will remain a work in progress: it does let the NIC focus on what it does best, analysis, but at some cost in prestige and time spent in bureaucratic jockeying—the “black Suburban” issue: who goes to White House policy meetings.


Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem

The strain of Black Nationalism that existed within the United Nations also worried conservatives as they monitored the evolution of events in Southern Africa. In their intense desire to rid the world of communism, other issues, such as race, were either marginalized or ignored. The chapter analyzes the three publications’ view of race as it relates to the issue of Rhodesia during the height of the Cold War. In ignoring the suppression of an entire race of people, Human Events and National Review contrasted what they perceived to be a stable, anticommunist, biracial society with the militarism and lawlessness that they argued defined the 1960s and 1970s. While the two conservative publications viewed Rhodesia as a model of biracial success, Commentary focused on the Carter administration’s dismissive attitude about the dangers of Soviet encroachment within the African hemisphere. The Right argued that the Carter White House, in its refusal to endorse Rhodesia’s 1979 parliamentary elections due to a lack of representation of militant nationalist groups, and its belief in the policy of détente, continued to send a message of American weakness and indifference to totalitarianism around the world.


Author(s):  
Simon Miles

Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy legacy remains hotly contested, and as new archival sources come to light, those debates are more likely to intensify than to recede into the background. In dealings with the Soviet Union, the Reagan administration set the superpowers on a course for the (largely) peaceful end of the Cold War. Reagan began his outreach to Soviet leaders almost immediately after taking office and enjoyed some success, even if the dominant theme of the period remains fears of Reagan as a “button-pusher” in the public’s perception. Mikhail Gorbachev’s election to the post of General Secretary proved the turning point. Reagan, now confident in US strength, and Gorbachev, keen to reduce the financial burden of the arms race, ushered in a new, cooperative phase of the Cold War. Elsewhere, in particular Latin America, the administration’s focus on fighting communism led it to support human rights–abusing regimes at the same time as it lambasted Moscow’s transgressions in that regard. But even so, over the course of the 1980s, the United States began pushing for democratization around the world, even where Reagan and his advisors had initially resisted it, fearing a communist takeover. In part, this was a result of public pressure, but the White House recognized and came to support the rising tide of democratization. When Reagan left office, a great many countries that had been authoritarian were no longer, often at least in part because of US policy. US–Soviet relations had improved to such an extent that Reagan’s successor, Vice President George H. W. Bush, worried that they had gone too far in working with Gorbachev and been hoodwinked.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1871-1900
Author(s):  
Patrick O'Brien

AbstractAlthough Ireland is often cited as part of the vanguard of countries adopting forms of judicial self-governance in the 1990s, this appearance can be misleading: the Irish judiciary are self-governing only in limited respects. The judge-led Court Service is in charge of court estate, non-judicial personnel and provision of information on the court system to the public. Many key matters – discipline, promotions and deployment – remain largely out of the control of the corporate judiciary. Judicial appointments are significantly at the discretion of the government. In the last decade, there have been significant moves towards a more corporate judiciary and these are reflected in the creation of a judges’ representative body, the Association of Judges of Ireland, and a shadow Judges Council. There are currently proposals to create a new independent mechanism for appointing judges and to create a Judicial Council with a significant role in disciplining the judiciary.The Irish experience highlights the importance of political and cultural factors in establishing and maintaining judicial independence and self-governance. Despite the significant role for the government in judicial appointments, and the presence of a culture of political patronage in these appointments, there is nonetheless a robust culture ofindividualjudicial independence once judges have been appointed. The creation of the Courts Service in 1999 was a significant transfer of administrative power to the judiciary but it was approved without demur by the political branches, who welcomed the depoliticization of controversial decisions about court estate. Conversely, reforms to judicial appointments have been weak because politicians saw value in maintaining a relatively harmless form of political patronage, and proposals for a Judicial Council that have agreed in outline for two decades have yet to be enacted, apparently because they lack sufficient political salience. The defence of judicial independence, and the creation of robust institutional mechanisms for defending it, ultimately requires the goodwill of politicians.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document