Aaron Barnhart's Blog, page 7

Alt-right's roots are in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan

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The rise of the alt-right during the 2016 presidential campaign caught many off guard. After the election, the media scrambled to explain this surprising new power in American politics.

But was the alt-right really "new"?

Nearly 100 years ago, an organization rose up in the heart of America with an agenda almost identical to the alt-right's. It was fueled on paranoia and hate — paranoia that white men were losing control of their country, and hatred of immigrants, blacks, and elites.

Its nam...

Military dogs overcame a history of neglect, disrespect

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Military dogs serve with everything they've got, every minute they are on duty. They are very, very good dogs. 

The history of dogs offering help and comfort to American soldiers goes back to at least the Civil War. Once the U.S. began organizing K-9 corps in World War II, military dogs became indispensable to our defense. Today the U.S. is the leader in training military dogs to sniff out explosive devices and narcotics while keeping their two-legged companions safe across the globe.

You wo...

What John Kelly could learn about the Civil War from another general

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As I write this, the Internet is still going wild over former Marine general John Kelly, the president’s chief of staff, calling former Army general Robert E. Lee “a honorable man” on Monday.

Kelly added, “He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good fai...

The powerful message a Vietnam War memorial in Kansas City sends today

The Kansas City Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fountain takes up a city block along Broadway in the popular Westport district, yet to those who pass it by — more than 11,000 vehicles a day — it is either invisible or a mystery. It is set back from the street and partially obscured by landscaping. It does not project an eye-catching shower of power, but a gentle cascade that empties into a large rectangular pool that spills into still more pools. It was not built to dazzle the passersby but to carr...

A terrorism expert in 2005 predicted a massive attack on Las Vegas. But he got the killer's race wrong.

Upon hearing the grievous news out of Las Vegas Sunday night, I thought immediately of a prediction I had once read that just such an attack would someday strike the entertainment capital of the world.

The prediction had come from a former high-level counter-terrorism expert named Richard Clarke (above). He had seen it all coming: the mass killer on a suicide mission, the law enforcers unaware of his existence, the psychic gut punch to America's sense of safety that this orgy of violence was...