Our guest in this deep-probing discussion is historian Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame. He was, together with Martin Marty, the founder and director of a great project on modern religious fundamentalism which involved the contributions of over a hundred scholars from around the world as they investigated  the origins and militant intentions and programs of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism,  Buddhism and Sikhism.

Appleby is the Dean of the new School of Foreign Affairs at Notre Dame and one of the sharpest, wisest and valuably uninhibited analysts of the evil  that men do with religion as a primary political tool. Here he applies his analytic skill and wide knowledge to modern “Islamism” and helps to illuminate the origins and the long-lasting threat that the west (and the world!) must now confront.

So said Wellington about the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo – and the same can be said and is said by our guest, John Ferling – about the outcome of our Revolutionary War. In this 2006 conversation the masterly historian reviews how lucky we were and how much our victory was a gift from the French, who finally provided the naval blockade which blocked the escape of the British from Yorktown. The broader lesson is how utterly contingent can be the turns of history. Ferling provides a wonderfully rich narrative backing for this view.

Talk-show host Michael Medved writes sharp and popular books advancing an optimistic view of the American prospect. Back in 2009 we discussed his then-just published work, “The 10 Big Lies About America.”

A striking side-note from a discussion in 1981 with Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and historian of the Holocaust. He reveals that he himself was, inadvertently, the source of that designation – meaning, in the original Hebrew, “burnt offering” – for the term that has come to stand for the mass murder of European Jewry.

The trio of Hitler, Stalin and Mao were responsible for some 100 million political murders of civilians. Of these some 48 million could be traced to Mao Tse Tung and his two mad campaigns known as “The Great Leap Forward” and  “The Cultural Revolution.” The terrifying and inevitably riveting story was told by Oxford University historian Roderick Macfarquhar in his book “Mao’s Last Revolution.” He joined us in this exceptional program early in 2006.