Last night, to mark Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance day, I went to hear a lecture by Thomas Childers. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, my alma mater, and is one of the foremost experts on the Third Reich. He also has the distinction of offering one of the most popular classes Penn offers on that very subject, a class that upperclassmen urge their successors to take even if they have no interest in history.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first inaugural address, told a country struggling under the weight of the Great Depression that the nation needed to take action to rebuild and rejuvenate itself. He said: "Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now." It was a time not unlike our own, where misbehavior on Wall Street fed a widespread credit and confidence crisis that swept like a tornado through the U.S. and global economy. And as in 1933, Washington again faces the time-sensitive task of diagnosing how its institutions are ill-equipped to fix the nation's problems, and then building a new system responsive to America's new needs. This project will tell that story, through the eyes of the Americans affected.
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