Honest and Dishonest Graft—George W. Plunkitt

Honest and dishonest graft was a way of life in 19th century politics. In my last post I mentioned the great political cartoonist Thomas Nast. Nast burnished his fame with his cartoons identifying the corruption and graft of the Tammany Hall political machine in New York City politics. But I realize many of my readers […]

Thomas Nast and Santa Claus

Thomas Nast and Santa Claus go together. More on their relationship shortly. But first, who was Thomas Nast? Thanks largely to Thomas Nast, the political cartoon is an art form. Even if you don’t look at them regularly, you know the style. Most feature recognizable caricatures of public figures along with short text. The actions […]

Fascism’s Core Beliefs – What Are Its Dominant Values and Ideas?

So far, I’ve described some of the ideas of fascism and how it related (usually negatively) to the other philosophies of government and society of the 1920s and 1930s. In this post I’d like to examine some of fascism’s core beliefs that most fascist movements shared. I hope that fascism’s belief in the importance of […]