And I think the only way you're going to improve US foreign policy and set a sound course for the future is if you're willing to look back at what went wrong before.
But while I am proud to be an American, I am ashamed of what the Trump administration is doing in our name. It is literally rewriting the meaning of America.
To win in 2020, a Democratic nominee will need to win back voters in key Midwestern states who supported Trump in 2016.
History has been my primary intellectual passion ever since, as a boy in Southern California, I began reading books on World War II and the life of Winston Churchill.
At the University of California at Berkeley, my interests broadened from military history to diplomatic history and other disciplines.
I am certain that my family - my grandmother, mother and myself - had a credit score of zero when we arrived in 1976. There were no credit cards in the Soviet Union, and we didn't have any money.
I still have admiration for the vast majority of police officers, but there is no denying that some are guilty of mistreating the people they are supposed to serve.
Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian - anything but a normal, mainstream American.
France has had socialist presidents on and off since the 1920s, and it remains a free country. Socialists have ruled in many South American countries without ushering in disaster.
The 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has not so far provoked the kind of anguished debate that accompanied the 50th anniversary. The lack of controversy is fitting because there wasn't much soul-searching at the time.
Thirty years on, I am no longer as certain about anything as I was at age 20. I now regret my support for the war in Iraq and kick myself for the naive expectation that freedom was destined to prevail.
Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender - and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.
I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism.
Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.
Republicans used to bash President Barack Obama for alienating American allies, but Trump is turning off our partners like no one ever has.
History suggests that economic upheavals such as the Industrial and Information Revolutions eventually play themselves out and leave the entire world better off.
The United States has been locked in an escalating confrontation with Iran ever since President Trump decided to pull out of the nuclear deal in 2018 and to impose unilateral sanctions in 2019.
I have been a Republican as long as I can remember.
Joining the Grand Old Party seemed like a natural choice for someone like me who fled the Soviet Union as a boy and came to Los Angeles with his mother and grandmother in 1976.
As someone who has spent much of my life identifying as a conservative, I can't stand what American conservatism has become.
