Human Events

Human Events
Editor-in-chief Thomas S. Winter
Frequency Weekly
Founder Felix Morley, Frank Hanighen and Henry Regnery
Year founded 1944
First issue 1944
Language English
Website humanevents.com

Human Events is a weekly American conservative[1] magazine. It takes its name from the first sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence ("When in the course of human events...")

Human Events is published in Washington, DC by Eagle Publishing (which also owns Regnery Publishing), a subsidiary of Phillips Publishing. Thomas S. Winter is editor-in-chief and Jason Mattera is online editor [1]. Regular writers have included Robert Novak, Ann Coulter, Terrence P. Jeffery and John Gizzi. Occasional contributors have included Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and Oliver North, as well as conservative celebrities such as Ted Nugent, Chuck Norris and Pat Sajak.

Contents

History

Human Events was founded in 1944 by Washington Post editor (1933–40) Felix Morley, newspaperman Frank Hanighen and former New Dealer[2] Henry Regnery. In 1951, Frank Chodorov, former director of the Henry George School of Social Science[3] in New York, replaced Morley as editor, merging his newsletter, analysis, into Human Events.[4] By the early 1960s, Allan Ryskind (son of Morrie Ryskind) and Winter had acquired the publication.[5] In 1993, Human Events was acquired by Eagle Publishing.

Influence on Ronald Reagan

Human Events was former President Ronald Reagan's "favorite reading for years," writes biographer Richard Reeves.[6] A loyal subscriber since 1961,[7] Reagan said it “helped me stop being a liberal Democrat,”[8] calling it "must reading for conservatives who want to know what is really going on in Washington, D.C."[9] During the 1980 presidential campaign, Democrats released a document entitled "Ronald Reagan, Extremist Collaborator—An Exposé," in which, according to biographer Lee Edwards, "[a]mong the proofs of Reagan's extremism was that he read the conservative weekly Human Events."[10] After being elected President, Reagan would occasionally write or call Winter or Ryskind.[11]

"Human Events, however, was no favorite of the new men around Reagan," writes Reeves. "Baker and Darman, and Deaver too, did their best each week to keep it out of the reading material they gave the President."[12] "When he discovered White House aides were blocking its delivery, President Reagan arranged for multiple copies to be sent to the White House residence every weekend," writes Edwards, who adds that Reagan took care "marking and clipping articles and passing them along to his assistants."[13]

Just before his 1982 tax hike, Reagan met with what he called "some of my old friends from Human Events" (he mentioned Ryskind and Stan Evans),[14] who warned him about "disloyal" White House staff (in particular James Baker) who favored making a deal on taxes with the Democratic Congress. (Reagan subsequently made such a deal, in which for each $1 in higher taxes Congress promised $3 in spending cuts; Reagan delivered the tax hike, but Congress reneged, actually increasing spending.)[15]

At the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, Reagan told Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that he could not give up the Strategic Defense Initiative because "'...the people who were the most outspoken critics of the Soviet Union over the years’—he mentioned his favorite paper, Human Events," according to Reeves, "‘They’re kicking my brains out’."[16]

"Harmful Books"

In 2005, Human Events published a list of Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries[2]:

  1. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
  2. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
  3. Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, by Mao Zedong
  4. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey
  5. Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
  6. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
  7. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
  8. The Course in Positive Philosophy, by Auguste Comte
  9. Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
  10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes

Twenty books received honorable mention, including The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, and Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson.

Conservative of the Year

Year Choice Lifetime Notes
2007 Rush Limbaugh b. 1951
2008 Sarah Palin b. 1964
2009 Dick Cheney b. 1941
2010 Jim DeMint b. 1951
2011 Paul Ryan b. 1970

References

  1. ^ Its masthead identifies Human Events as "The National Conservative Weekly."
  2. ^ Robert McC. Thomas Jr. (June 23, 1996). "Henry Regnery, 84, Ground-Breaking Conservative Publisher". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/23/us/henry-regnery-84-ground-breaking-conservative-publisher.html. 
  3. ^ The Henry George School of Social Science
  4. ^ Hamowy, Ronald (2008). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. SAGE. p. 62. ISBN 1412965802. http://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC. Retrieved 2010-07-24. 
  5. ^ Shirley, Craig (2005). Reagan's revolution: the untold story of the campaign that started it all. Thomas Nelson, Inc.. p. 337. ISBN 0785260498. http://books.google.com/books?id=fPWPDH-0TZYC. Retrieved 5 February 2011. 
  6. ^ Reeves, Richard (2005). President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 24. ISBN 0743282302. http://books.google.com/books?id=RMKgNOytMWIC. Retrieved 2010-07-24. 
  7. ^ Shirley, Craig (2005). Reagan's revolution: the untold story of the campaign that started it all. Thomas Nelson, Inc.. p. 337. ISBN 0785260498. http://books.google.com/books?id=fPWPDH-0TZYC. Retrieved 5 February 2011. 
  8. ^ Lee Edwards (February 5, 2011). "Reagan’s Newspaper". Human Events (Eagle Publishing). http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41609. Retrieved 5 February 2011. 
  9. ^ "HUMAN EVENTS: The Conservative Weekly". Conservative Advertising Network. Eagle Interactive. http://www.eagleinteractive.com/card_heprint_print.htm. Retrieved 5 February 2011. 
  10. ^ Edwards, Lee (2005). The essential Ronald Reagan: a profile in courage, justice, and wisdom. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 57. ISBN 0742543757. http://books.google.com/books?id=-dSvWrJ6ooAC. Retrieved 5 February 2011. 
  11. ^ Shirley, Craig (2005). Reagan's revolution: the untold story of the campaign that started it all. Thomas Nelson, Inc.. p. 337. ISBN 0785260498. http://books.google.com/books?id=fPWPDH-0TZYC. Retrieved 5 February 2011. 
  12. ^ Reeves, Richard (2005). President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 24. ISBN 0743282302. http://books.google.com/books?id=RMKgNOytMWIC. Retrieved 2011-02-05. 
  13. ^ Lee Edwards (February 5, 2011). "Reagan’s Newspaper". Human Events (Eagle Publishing). http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41609. Retrieved 5 February 2011.  Cf. Reeves, Richard (2005). President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 25, fn.. ISBN 0743282302. http://books.google.com/books?id=RMKgNOytMWIC. Retrieved 2010-07-24. 
  14. ^ Skinner, Kiron K.; Anderson, Annelise; Anderson, Martin (2004). Reagan: A Life in Letters. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 595. ISBN 0743276426. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZrRc_ABenS8C. Retrieved 2010-07-24. 
  15. ^ Hayward, Steven F. (2009). The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989. New York: Random House, Inc.. pp. 210–212. ISBN 1400053579. http://books.google.com/books?id=-TUBoKsLAjAC. Retrieved 2010-07-24. 
  16. ^ Reeves, Richard (2005). President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 351–352. ISBN 0743282302. http://books.google.com/books?id=RMKgNOytMWIC. Retrieved 2010-07-24. 

External links