Quotes by Heather Cox Richardson - Page 2

FDR's New Deal and, after it, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's similar Middle Way, used the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure, like roads and bridges.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Bridges
Dwight
Infrastructure
Middle
New Deal
President
Safety
Safety Net
Business Government New
Basic
Deal
Eisenhower
Fdr
Net
Promote
Provide
Regulate
Roads
Similar
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During the Civil War, the United States government had organized new territories in the West at a cracking pace, both to keep the Confederacy at bay and to bring the region's mines and farmland under government control.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Civil War
Farmland
Mines
Organized
Pace
United States Government
Bay
Civil
Confederacy
Cracking
Government Control
Region
Territories
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By 2015, the top 1 percent of families took home more than 20 percent of income. Wealth distribution was 10 times worse than that: the families in the top 1 percent owned as much as the families in the bottom 90 percent.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Distribution
Owned
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The political construct that idealized cowboys fell into disrepute during and immediately after the New Deal. In those years, Americans turned away from Western individualism and toward the idea of an activist government.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Individualism
New Deal
Construct
Cowboys
Idealized
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Mt. Rushmore was conceived in 1923 in a desperate attempt to draw tourist dollars to a state that had been rushed into the Union to protect Republican political dominance and could not manage to achieve economic stability.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Achieve
Desperate
Dollars
Dominance
Economic
Manage
Protect
Stability
Attempt
Conceived
Draw
Union
Rushed
Tourist
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In psychology, trying to force others to accept the reality of a fake world is called gaslighting. It got its name from the 1944 film 'Gaslight,' in which a husband convinces his wife and their neighbors that she is insane.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Fake
Force
Husband
Insane
Psychology
Reality
Accept
Name
Neighbors
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Since the 1980s, Republicans have argued that policies embraced by a majority of Americans to promote equality of opportunity actually infringe liberty by hampering businessmen's actions or taking their money through taxes.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Equality
Argued
Businessmen
Embraced
Promote
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To make sure Republicans stayed in power, they suppressed voting by people likely to vote Democratic, and gerrymandered states so that even if Democrats won a majority of votes, they would have a minority of representatives.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Representatives
Minority
Stayed
Suppressed
Votes
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The only thing that's really hard for me is when I go to bed after everybody else in my house gets up. And that - you just feel stale. It just feels awful to be still finishing your day when everybody else is starting theirs.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Finishing
Stale
Your Me Day
Me Day Feel
Everybody Else
Me Day Your
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Republicans are a shrinking minority ruling an increasingly angry majority that not only wants to change the Republican policies that are moving wealth upward, but also threatens to hold Republican leaders accountable to the law.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Ruling
Shrinking
Accountable
Increasingly
Minority
Threatens
Upward
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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts slashes taxes on the very wealthy and kills regulations with the idea that rich businessmen will invest their money into the economy to support workers - the same idea that Republicans embraced in the 1920s.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Tax Cuts
Wealthy
Acts
Invest
Cuts
Embraced
Regulations
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Voter suppression in Florida in 2000 helped put Republican George W Bush into office despite losing the popular vote and the targeting of state legislative elections in 2010 enabled Republicans to gerrymander states out of Democrat reach.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Democrat
Despite
Florida
Losing
Office
Suppression
Vote
Bush
Elections
Republicans
George
George W
George W. Bush
Helped
Legislative
Popular
Reach
Targeting
Voter
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The Treaty of Fort Laramie established most of what would later become South Dakota as a reservation, along with the Black Hills. But the treaty did not stop miners, buffalo hunters, railroad men, or settlers from intruding on Lakota lands.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Buffalo
Dakota
Hills
Hunters
Miners
Settlers
South Dakota
Established
Fort
Lands
Railroad
Reservation
Treaty
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In 1884, for the first time since the Civil War, voters had elected a Democrat to the White House. Grover Cleveland promised to use the government to protect ordinary Americans, and to stop congressmen from catering to wealthy industrialists.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Catering
Civil War
Democrat
First Time
Ordinary
Voters
Wealthy
White House
Time War Government
War Time Government
Civil
Elected
Promised
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The Middle Way included the largest public works project in American history: the Interstate Highway system, which updated American roads for a driving generation with leisure time on their hands, but expanded the federal government's purview.
Heather Cox Richardson /
American History
Interstate
Leisure
Leisure Time
Time History Government
Highway
Included
Largest
Roads
Updated
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Republicans who controlled the government in the 1920s insisted that national prosperity depended on government protection of the rich, who they believed would plow their capital back into the economy to provide jobs and higher wages for workers.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Controlled
Protection
Wages
Depended
Insisted
Plow
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Americans are right to wonder if, at long last, what George Washington called the Great Experiment has failed, and that our founders have lost their extraordinary wager that regular people could govern themselves better than a few rich men could.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Extraordinary
Founders
Rich
Wonder
Men Great Long
Washington
Failed
Experiment
George
Govern
Regular People
Wager
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Dog whistles about women who want handouts are simply an acceptable way to say that women are not worth as much as the men who must dominate the government. At the heart of Movement Conservatism is the conviction that America belongs to elite men alone.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Acceptable
Conservatism
Alone Men Women
Belongs
Dominate
Elite
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Trump brings rhetoric and reality together in a cartoon caricature of a Republican politician that anyone can understand. That gives him a vital role in history. He is the perfect exorcist to drive a stake through the heart of the modern Republican Party.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Cartoon
Exorcist
Republican Party
Rhetoric
Caricature
Vital
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Republicans turned against organized workers and abandoned the idea of promoting equality at the bottom of the economic scale. They turned their idea of economic harmony into a justification for supporting industrialists, who were the nation's job creators.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Abandoned
Harmony
Job Creators
Justification
Organized
Scale
Creators
Supporting
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Roosevelt's New Deal regulated business, protected social welfare and promoted national infrastructure on the principle that the role of government was not simply to protect the property of the wealthy, but rather was to promote equality of opportunity for all.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Equality
Opportunity
Business
Government
Infrastructure
New Deal
Social
Social Welfare
Wealthy
Welfare
Business Government Opportunity
Deal
Simply
National
Principle
Promote
Rather
Role
Roosevelt
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In 1860, the Republicans put Lincoln in the White House, and Southerners left the Union. Their absence opened the way for the new party to reshape the national government, from protecting the wealth of propertied men to promoting economic opportunity for everyone.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Absence
White House
Economic Opportunity
Lincoln
Opened
Protecting
Southerners
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Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, Movement Conservatives have tapped into the idea that an activist government redistributed wealth to lazy minorities. But they have also pushed hard on the idea that true Americans are Western individualists.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Activist
Brown
Lazy
Minorities
Conservatives
Individualist
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In the 1850s, as the numbers of Americans who were not invested in the slave system grew, the South's leaders felt they had to entrench their power in the government or it was only a question of time until lawmakers would begin to regulate, or even outlaw, slavery.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Lawmakers
Outlaw
Slave
Time Power Government
Invested
Regulate
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When Ronald Reagan's administration was exposed for having illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money covertly for the Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, Reagan acknowledged that the evidence was damning - yet defended the principle behind the scheme.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Government
Administration
Arms
Evidence
Exposed
Fighting
Iran
Acknowledged
Behind
Defended
Contra
Damning
Scheme
Principle
Raise
Reagan
Rebels
Sold
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Men like Abraham Lincoln recognized that if the slaveholders were not stopped, it would only be a question of time until they spread their system of elite rule to the entire country. Poor men would be bound for life into menial labor, and American democracy would die.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Abraham
Democracy
Labor
Poor
Spread
Life Time Men
Elite
Entire
Lincoln
Question
Recognized
Rule
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Prodded by the needs of the Union cause, the Republican Party created a strong national government that educated young men and gave them land to farm. Ultimately, the GOP abolished slavery, then gave freedmen the vote so they could protect their own economic interests.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Abolish
Gop
Republican Party
Farm
Young Men
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The idea that the country should be led by white men goes back to antebellum slaveholders, who argued that the world was naturally divided between working drudges and elite leaders, who directed their workers and used the wealth the workers produced to promote progress.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Divided
Wealth
Workers
Naturally
Argued
Directed
Elite
Goes
Led
Produced
Promote
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Trump is a populist in the same mold as the nineteenth-century Populists who gave their name to American grassroots political movements. Historians and pundits argued themselves blue in the face over whether Populists were reactionary or progressive, but they were both.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Blue
Grassroots
Mold
Populist
Progressive
Pundits
Trump
Argued
Gave
Historians
Movements
Reactionary
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Special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, provided ample evidence that the president should be investigated for obstruction of justice in his attempt to quell the Russia investigation by firing Comey and urging aides to lie.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Evidence
Firing
Interference
Investigating
Obstruction
Aide
Ample
Attempt
Counsel
Provided
Quell
Robert
Urging
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Trump's alliance with Russia's Vladimir Putin, in defiance of America's own intelligence community, the Department of Justice, and the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, forces us to face that the fundamental principles of our nation are under attack.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Bipartisan
Defiance
Department
Fundamental Principles
Intelligence Community
Putin
Senate
Alliance
Report
Committee
Department Of Justice
Vladimir Putin
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If Congress allows the USPS to collapse and private companies take over the mail business, we can expect what we have seen with private internet providers: thorough service in urban areas that will turn a healthy profit, either none or very expensive service in rural areas.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Collapse
Expensive
Mail
Profit
Providers
Rural Areas
Thorough
Urban
Urban Areas
Rural
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In the individualist ideology, a man is responsible for his wife and children. This relegates women to domestic roles as wives and mothers protected by their menfolk, or silences them as special interest harpies demanding government benefits that will destroy individualist men.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Ideology
Protected
Men Women Government
Demanding
Destroy
Domestic
Women Men Government
Individualist
Mothers
Silences
Special Interest
Wives
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The same Republicans who had threatened to impeach Hillary Clinton remained silent when, immediately after his surprise victory, Trump refused to abide by laws about emoluments or nepotism, openly profiting from the presidency and filling the White House with personal relatives.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Filling
Nepotism
Presidency
Silent
Surprise
Threatened
White House
Abide
Hillary
Hillary Clinton
Openly
Refused
Relatives
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For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Activist
Democrat
Franklin
Infrastructure
Safety
Safety Net
Basic
Republicans
Generation
Invested
Net
Provided
Roosevelt
Unravel
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In the 1880s and 1890s, extremists in the Republican party also threatened the future of the US. Just when it seemed the extremists' control of the government was complete, their political machinations, propaganda, and demonization of their opposition fueled a dramatic backlash.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Backlash
Dramatic
Opposition
Propaganda
Republican Party
Threatened
Extremists
Fueled
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Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Equality
Independence
Abraham
Declaration
Economy
Healthy
Party
Republican Party
Rich
Depended
Organizing
Healthy Economy
Widespread
Lincoln
Promised
Warned
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The fight is over two fundamentally different ideas about the nature of America. On one side are those who believe that that every hardworking person should be able to rise. On the other are those who believe that wealthy white men should always rule over a permanent class of workers.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Different Ideas
Hardworking
Permanent
Wealthy
Workers
Rise
Fundamentally
Rule
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Since 2000, Republican policies have suppressed Democratic voting; since 2010, Republican gerrymandering has given the Republicans a heavy systematic advantage in Congress; and the last two Republican presidents have won the White House while losing the popular vote to their opponents.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Opponents
Systematic
Voting
White House
Presidents
Suppressed
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Only a few years after building a federal system that cleared the way for equal opportunity, Republicans faced a racist and xenophobic backlash against an active government - and they folded. By the 1880s, the party's leaders had abandoned their message of opportunity and tied themselves to big business.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Abandoned
Active
Backlash
Big Business
Equal
Equal Opportunity
Tied
Business Government Opportunity
Cleared
Republicans
Folded
Xenophobic
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I have always been a letter writer, and I found when my numbers got over half a million, I couldn't think about how many people there were out there. I had to think as if I were writing a letter to my brothers and sisters, to my good friends with whom I have had a correspondence since I could hold a pen.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Brothers And Sisters
Correspondence
Half
Numbers
Good Always People
Writer
Brothers
Sisters
Good People Numbers
Good Friends
Hold
How Many People
Letter
Million
Pen
Whom
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Today, the District of Columbia has more residents than at least two other states; Puerto Rico has more than 20. With numbers like that, admitting either or both to the union is less a political power play on the Democrats' part than the late-19th-century partisan move that still warps American politics.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Admitting
American Politics
Columbia
Political Power
Puerto Rico
Residents
Rico
District
Partisan
Puerto
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Since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office promising to scale back the federal government, Republican leaders have promised to cut regulation and taxes, and to return power to individuals to arrange their lives as they see fit. But they have never entirely managed to eradicate the New Deal government.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Federal Government
New Deal
Regulation
Power Government New
Scale
Arrange
Eradicate
Entirely
Promised
Reagan
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Republicans controlled the federal government for decades after the Civil War, and their policies funneled wealth upward -- with dire consequences. In 1893, the economy crashed, and too few Americans had enough purchasing power to revive it. Lincoln had been right: Government that served the wealthy would ruin the country.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Civil War
Controlled
Decades
Federal Government
Had Enough
Purchasing
Purchasing Power
Revive
Wealthy
Consequences
Crashed
Dire
Lincoln
Ruin
Served
Upward
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The rise of a new kind of political science in the 1960s has been driving a wedge between political insiders and voters ever since. By turning voters into interest groups, it stopped establishment leaders from articulating a national narrative. It opened the way for Movement Conservatives to create today's political crisis.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Science
Articulating
Crisis
Establishment
Groups
Movement
Narrative
Political Science
Today
Voters
Since
Rise
Between
Turning
Conservatives
Create
Ever
New Kind
Opened
Wedge
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At the turn of the last century, extremists were forced back to the political fringes while younger politicians resurrected the vitality of the original Republican vision. They recognized that the nation could only develop and grow by protecting equality of opportunity for hardworking Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Equality
Opportunity
Bottom
Economic
Hardworking
Vision
Younger
Original
Nation
Develop
Politicians
Extremists
Forced
Ladder
Last Century
Protecting
Recognized
Copy Quote
The fantasy world of Movement Conservatives is no longer fringe talk. The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination embrace it. They are playing to a chorus of true believers, and they are preaching what that choir wants to hear. They are following the same pattern Eric Hoffer identified as the path to authoritarianism.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Authoritarianism
Candidates
Choir
Chorus
Embrace
Fantasy
Following
Fringe
Movement
Path
Preaching
Presidential
Believers
Conservatives
Fantasy World
Hear
Identified
Leading
Longer
Nomination
True Believers
Wants
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In the 1960s, Movement Conservatives created a cast of villains. The Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and President Eisenhower's use of troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957 enabled Movement Conservatives to resurrect old white fears that government activism was simply a way to funnel white tax dollars to African-Americans.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Activism
Little Rock
Tax Dollars
Troops
Conservatives
Eisenhower
Fears
Villains
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The Declaration of Independence promised citizens equal access to economic opportunity. This was the powerful principle for which men were willing to fight the American Revolution, but it was never codified in law. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they assumed that the country's vast resources would ensure equality of opportunity.
Heather Cox Richardson /
Independence
American Revolution
Declaration
Founding
Assumed
Vast
Economic Opportunity
Ensure
Fathers
Founding Fathers
Principle
Promised
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