Human Events
Human Events is a conservative American political news and analysis newspaper and website. Founded in 1944 as a print newspaper, Human Events became a digital-only publication in 2013.
Human Events takes its name from the first sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence: "When in the course of human events...". The magazine was published in Washington, D.C., most recently by Eagle Publishing, the owner of Regnery Publishing, a subsidiary of Phillips Publishing. Thomas S. Winter was editor-in-chief and Cathy Taylor was editorial director of the print edition.
History
Human Events was founded in 1944 by Felix Morley, who was from 1933 to 1940 the editor of The Washington Post; Frank Hanighen; veteran journalist James ; and former New Dealer Henry Regnery.In June 1949, Human Events published a letter written by, the daughter of Vichy France Prime Minister Pierre Laval and wife of attorney René de Chambrun, addressed to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1948. In the letter, she was critical of Churchill's support for the French resistance, and she suggested the firing squad who killed her father "wore British uniforms".
In 1951, Frank Chodorov, former director of the Henry George School of Social Science in New York, replaced Morley as editor, merging his newsletter, analysis, into Human Events. In June 1953, Freda Utley wrote an article for the publication where she criticized the awarding of the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia, stating: "all that much-abused Neville Chamberlain did was agree to the self-determination of the people of the Sudentenland...which never would have been awarded to the Czechs if Wilson's Fourteen Points had been adhered to".
By the early 1960s, Allan Ryskind and Winter had acquired the publication. Contributors to Human Events from the 1960s to the 1980s included Spiro Agnew, James L. Buckley, Peter Gemma, Pat Buchanan, Ralph de Toledano, Russell Kirk, Phyllis Schlafly, Murray Rothbard and Henry Hazlitt. Other regular writers included Robert Novak, Ann Coulter, Terence P. Jeffrey, and John Gizzi, its chief political editor. Contributors have included Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Paul Craig Roberts, Cliff Kincaid, and Pat Sajak. Newsweek reported that although Human Events did not have a large readership outside the Washington D.C. area, "the tough little tabloid enjoys an impact out of all proportion to its circulation".
Human Events backed US military intervention in the Vietnam War; after the war ended, the publication blamed American liberals for the collapse of South Vietnam.
In July 1985, Human Events gave qualified support to Apartheid South Africa, describing the country as "a pro-Western bulwark that provides more in the way of freedom and wealth to its blacks than the vast majority of black African states". Human Events also described Nelson Mandela as the main obstacle to peace in South Africa: "While President Botha is moving at a fast and furious pace to end the apartheid system, Mandela remains as adamant a revolutionary as ever. He's still a Marxist, still a man of violence, still a supporter of the Communist-run ANC". It was not without sympathy for the plight of blacks under the system however, giving black power activist Steve Biko a thoughtful obituary. The perspective offered throughout was that Marxist rule in South Africa was the worst option, however bad others might be.
Eagle Publishing placed the magazine up for sale in February 2013, when it announced that it would close the publication if no buyer could be found. On February 27, 2013, Human Events announced that, after 69 years, it would halt publication of the print edition but would continue to maintain the websites HumanEvents.com and RedState.com with original reporting. Eagle Publishing, which acquired the magazine in 1993, said that it had been subsidizing the publication for several years but could no longer afford to do so: "the realities of the 24-hour news cycle and the brutal economics of a weekly print publication have become insurmountable."
Human Events printed 40,000 copies per week and had a staff of 15 full-time employees. A "restructuring" plan that involved layoffs had already been attempted but was insufficient to allow continuation of the print edition.
In January 2014, Eagle Publishing was acquired by Salem Media Group.
In March 2019, political writer Raheem Kassam and lawyer Will Chamberlain purchased Human Events from Salem Media Group for $300,000 with a view of returning Human Events to regular online publication. On May 1, 2019, Human Events was re-launched under the management of Kassam as Global editor-in-chief and Chamberlain as publisher. On August 8, 2019, Human Events announced that Kassam was leaving the outlet, and the Editor-in-Chief responsibilities would be taken over by Chamberlain.
Influence on Ronald Reagan
Human Events was former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's "favorite reading for years," writes biographer Richard Reeves. A loyal subscriber since 1961, Reagan said it “helped me stop being a liberal Democrat,” calling it "must reading for conservatives who want to know what is really going on in Washington, D.C." Reagan contributed some articles to Human Events in the 1970s. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Democrats released a document entitled "Ronald Reagan, Extremist Collaborator — An Exposé," in which, according to biographer Lee Edwards, "mong the proofs of Reagan's extremism was that he read the conservative weekly Human Events." After being elected President, Reagan would occasionally write or call Winter or Ryskind."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." "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."
Just before his 1982 tax hike, Reagan met with what he called "some of my old friends from Human Events", who warned him about "disloyal" White House staff who favored making a deal on taxes with the Democratic Congress.
At the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, Reagan told Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that he could not give up the Strategic Defense Initiative because of "'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’."
"Most Harmful Books" list
In 2005, Human Events published a list of the "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries":- The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
- Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
- Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, by Mao Zedong
- Kinsey Reports, by Alfred Kinsey
- Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
- Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
- The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
- The Course in Positive Philosophy, by Auguste Comte
- Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
- General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes
"Conservative of the Year" award
| Year | Choice | Lifetime | Position | Notes |
| 1998 | Ken Starr | b. 1946 | Independent Counsel | |
| 1999 | Ronald Reagan | 1911–2004 | President of the United States | Also named "Man of the Century" |
| 2000 | William Rehnquist Clarence Thomas Antonin Scalia | 1924–2005 b. 1948 1936–2016 | U.S. Supreme Court Justices | |
| 2001 | George W. Bush | b. 1946 | President of the United States | - |
| 2002 | John Ashcroft | b. 1942 | Attorney General | |
| 2003 | Roy Moore | b. 1947 | Alabama Chief Justice | |
| 2004 | John O'Neill | b. 1946 | Swift Boat Veteran | |
| 2005 | Mike Pence | b. 1959 | U.S. Representative | Former Governor of Indiana; current Vice President of the United States |
| 2006 | Jim Sensenbrenner | b. 1943 | U.S. Representative | |
| 2007 | Rush Limbaugh | b. 1951 | Radio Host | |
| 2008 | Sarah Palin | b. 1964 | Alaska Governor | Also the 2008 GOP nominee for Vice President |
| 2009 | Dick Cheney | b. 1941 | Vice President of the United States | |
| 2010 | Jim DeMint | b. 1951 | U.S. Senator | Since April 2013, president of The Heritage Foundation |
| 2011 | Paul Ryan | b. 1970 | U.S. Representative | Elected Speaker of the House in October 2015 |
| 2012 | Scott Walker | b. 1967 | Governor of Wisconsin | |
| 2013 | Darrell Issa | b. 1953 | U.S. Representative |