Heather Cox Richardson

constant swing back and forth because every time we do that swing, it hurts people a lot and it hurts the environment a lot.

When I think about the 21st century, I want to get back to a country that does expand the rights of the Declaration of Independence and that puts us on the same plane that we've been in our better moments.

But I would also really love for us to find some way to create those guardrails so that people can't say, oh, wow, we have the strongest economy in the world.

You know what let's do?

Let's screw with it, you know?

Or we have the safest world we've ever lived in.

I've got a great idea.

Let's go to war against Iran.

Well, what you just identified there was missing one big word, and that's race.

You know, that literally, that language literally comes out of the 1870s and the idea that the federal government was going to try to level the economic especially, but also the –

I won't say social because they weren't really into that.

They were trying to make sure that black Americans weren't killed by their white neighbors, which seems like not a very high bar, right?

Right.

That's when you get the language in 1871 saying, hey, hey, we don't have a problem with race.

We have a problem with poor people voting.

Right.

All of that stuff, that comes straight out of the 1870s.

And again, we could spend a long time on that.

But crucially, we know what language works to get rid of that.

And that is the language of community.