About Chuck Chalberg

John C. “Chuck” Chalberg writes from Minnesota and brings history to life in the persons of G.K. Chesterton, George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Branch Rickey, and Teddy Roosevelt at History on Stage. Dr. Chalberg also teaches American history, as well as an occasional course on G.K. Chesterton, online for Homeschool Connections. He taught American History at Normandale Community College.

Should We End College Football?

By |2024-01-24T05:39:13-06:00January 23rd, 2024|Categories: Football, Sports|

The term “student-athlete” is at best inaccurate and at worst a fiction. Once upon a time college football was organized and run by and for students. Maybe it’s time to return to that by starting all over. Which institution of higher learning in America will one day become the University of Chicago of the twenty-first [...]

Christopher Lasch on the Elites’ Betrayal of Democracy

By |2024-01-09T18:06:27-06:00January 9th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Books, Community, Liberalism, Politics, Populism|

Though a self-described "man of the left," Christopher Lasch was once and always a populist. By the end of his life, he was concerned with the rise to power of American elites who, as of the mid-1990s, were already alien to—and divorced from—the masses of ordinary American citizens. The Revolt of the Elites and the [...]

Thomas Sowell’s “Social Justice Fallacies”

By |2023-11-26T11:30:25-06:00November 27th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Books, Civil Society, Equality, Ethnicity, Politics|

Thomas Sowell is quite content to make his case while he waits for the political tide to turn. The way things are going, this nonagenarian may still be on hand when conservative black politicians are the major American voice of this American minority. If and when that happens, wherever Thomas Sowell is, he will know [...]

Time to Retire the Term “Progressive”?

By |2023-10-24T20:43:13-05:00October 24th, 2023|Categories: History, Politics, Progressivism|

Could I ask a small favor? Could we either retire the adjective “progressive” whenever it is used in a political context or, if not, could we apply it more universally? Confused? Stay tuned. To be sure, the word has a lengthy history In American politics. That history stretches back to the early days of the [...]

“The Hour of Fate”: Theodore Roosevelt & American Capitalism

By |2023-08-21T18:27:32-05:00August 21st, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Books, Capitalism, Economics, Politics, Presidency, Teddy Roosevelt, Timeless Essays|

Theodore Roosevelt was the obvious victor in both of the “battles to transform American capitalism.” He refused to do the bidding of the coal operators and instead helped engineer a compromise. American capitalism was not so much transformed as tamed in the process. The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and the Battle to [...]

Patrick Deneen on the Need for Regime Change

By |2023-08-01T15:47:15-05:00August 1st, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Books, Community, Liberalism, Politics|

Political philosopher that he is, Patrick Deneen is preoccupied with the eternal question of the few versus the many. How to balance their interests? How to reconcile their differences? He hopes that a “mixed regime” will force the few and the many to learn from each other, while correcting the abuses and excesses of each [...]

The Moral Decline of the Dodgers

By |2023-06-12T16:33:45-05:00June 12th, 2023|Categories: Baseball, Catholicism|

More than 75 years ago, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey made history for the Brooklyn Dodgers by breaking baseball’s “color line." But today’s Los Angeles Dodgers are making a different kind of history by honoring men who put on nuns' habits in order to mock the Catholic Church. The devoutly Christian Robinson and Rickey must [...]

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life & Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

By |2023-06-09T07:20:15-05:00June 8th, 2023|Categories: Books, History, Presidency|

Gerald R. Ford took office at a time when “we didn’t need to look into the future but assure ourselves we had one.” And though biographer Richard Norton Smith argues that Ford was not a visionary, he did recognize the “long-term consequences of a public sector growing faster than the private economy that sustained it.” [...]

Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness”: A Story for the Ages

By |2023-06-02T11:56:58-05:00June 1st, 2023|Categories: Books, Cold War, Western Civilization|

"Witness" is a brief against the “dying civilization” that was the United States of the Jazz Age. The America of F. Scott Fitzgerald, flappers, and general frivolity was dying? The young Whittaker Chambers vaguely thought so at the time. The mature Chambers of "Witness" was convinced of that. Whittaker Chambers “Man without mysticism [...]

The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War

By |2023-04-25T14:52:16-05:00April 25th, 2023|Categories: Books, Conservatism, George Orwell, World War I, World War II|

Does the "socialist-patriot" George Orwell offer a model for us today? Specifically for the young—of left or right—for whom Peter Stansky's book is likely meant to serve as an introduction of sorts? The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War by Peter Stansky (130 pages, Stanford University Press, 2023) Less a brief biography than a lengthy [...]

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln & the American Struggle

By |2023-05-06T22:48:28-05:00March 14th, 2023|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Republic, Books, Civil War, History, Slavery|

Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln? Of course there is, especially if the biographer in question is as deft and insightful as Jon Meacham. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham (676 pages, Random House, 2022) Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham [...]

Grover Cleveland: A Man of Iron

By |2023-11-08T18:56:44-06:00February 7th, 2023|Categories: Books, History, Presidency|

Biographer Troy Senik insists that though Grover Cleveland’s was not a “great presidency,” his subject is “one of our greatest presidents." And it is the fundamental soundness of Cleveland's character that goes a good deal of the way toward explaining why this might well be so. A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable [...]

H.L. Mencken on Public Education

By |2022-09-06T13:31:05-05:00September 6th, 2022|Categories: Education, Government|

What H.L. Mencken thought was the case in his day likely remains the case today: Public schools have “done more harm than good.” How could they not, Mencken asked. Having taken the “care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs,” the politicians of his day had “thrown” the entire [...]

Go to Top