Aaron Sheehan-Dean

speaker

924 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 24 Aug

Aaron Sheehan-Dean’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

American History Hit · What Made America? Victory in the Civil War · 22 Jun 2026 podcast

I mean, I think unfortunately for our students, and I understand a sense of cynicism, what I try to encourage in my students is skepticism.

and not cynicism.

And the cynicism is, I think, generated by a sense that the vote is a blunt tool.

It takes a long time.

And you can see this in the civil rights movement that African-Americans are, you know, they're agitating, obviously from the 1830s and 40s, they're agitating against slavery from the beginning of slavery, but for access to the vote and for legal tools.

And there are civil rights movements all through the 19th century and then into the 20th century

It takes, in other words, decades and decades of labor and then actively, of course, and the famous the kind of classic civil rights era over the late 40s, the 1950s, and then up to the kind of crescendo of the 64 Civil Rights Act and the 65 Voting Rights Act.

And I think for many young people today, the vote just looks like something that takes a long time to generate change.

And it does.

That's the point of democracy is it's supposed to be slow.

It's supposed to be processional.

It is not even I mean, a parliamentary system works faster than our system.

So, you know, it demands a level of patience that I understand for people that are looking at the climate disaster that's looming and other things and thinking we have to act with immediate speed.

We can't wait another four years or we can't wait another two years.

But underneath that impatience, what I tried at least to instill and how well it takes root in today's generation of students, I think we'll sort of see in the coming generations.

is an acknowledgement that we make these decisions together.

And this even, I think, transcends the vote itself, that it is Americans or people in other countries that are living in democracies who are responsible for making the changes they want to see in their world.

And the Civil War has plenty of that.

The U.S.

Sanitary Commission, obviously the fact that there is a volunteer army of 2.1 million men

Showing 521–540 of 924 · page 27 of 47