here's a look at the title shows by vroman's bookstore in pasadena california.

>> up next on booktv "after words" with guest host matthew continetti editor of the washington free begin. this week's heather cox richardson and her new book "to make men free" a history of the republican party. in it, she discusses the one's republican belief articulated by lincoln that government is supposed to promote economic opportunity for all. she explores the parties repeated abandonment of that principle in the 20th century and its return to its roots after every economic collapse. this program is about an hour. hostos hello i am matthew continetti editor of the washington free beacon. you can follow me on twitter. today we are going to discuss "to make men free" a history of the republican party. my guest is professor heather cox richardson boston college.

welcome professor. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> host: how long have you been teaching at boston college? >> guest: this is my fourth year in boston college but i've been a teacher since 1987. american history 19th century primarily politics and economics are pretty much anything they want to throw at me. >> host: was the most unusual course you have caught? >> guest: comic books. we have a history of comic books so we put on a comic book expedition. a beautiful job. >> host: is their second book? >> guest: no. >> host: why a book about the republican party? >> guest: i studied primarily 19th century politics and economics in if he do that you must understand the republican party but then i also teach in american history so moving into the 20th century the republican party seemed a no-brainer. >> host: went to have the idea for this particular book? >> guest: i'm going to have to go with 1987.

i wrote four books first to really get the 19th century under wraps and i taught again for a couple of decades but it's been in the back of my mind for a long time. it'll be interesting to move on after this one. >> host: that's right to take you a decade or more to write it. >> guest: took me more than a decade to think about it. it took me four years to write it. >> host: who did you say is the intended audience for a book like this? >> guest: is intended for a popular audience. it's deeply theoretical in form but you wouldn't know that reading it. it's great stories about how the largest issues of the american past in a way that i hope it's fun and digestible. >> host: how would you describe your own politics? >> guest: i'm a historian is how i would describe my own politics. people who read my work and says that i'm a far righty and people from the far right insist i'm a

far lefty. i'm a historian. and i look at what happened. >> host: would you say many republicans on the faculty at d.c.? >> guest: i don't know they don't talk about it. >> host: isn't tied to their profession and they don't have politics just whatever they feel the same? >> guest: i think they decide according to issues. i don't know how people vote. >> host: and the students what is your sense of the student population that you have been teaching? have they been political shifts among students and have they been more conservative in the 80s than they are today? >> guest: you know that's a good question. i'm not entirely sure. i could make a statement on that because of course if you look at the student sitcom to you once i worked in the republican party i got an enormous amount republican students who say i'm a republican like you which i answer i'm a professor who studies history. so i don't think i have a very good sense of what young people

are doing right now because they are self-selecting to work with me because they think i'm on the right. >> host: i'm struck by you saying that you don't have a political bent. the final chapter of the book is a conclusion very favor will toward barack obama. as a reader that's a sense i got. is that fair to say? >> guest: he's not in the final chapter. he's in the conclusion. as a symbol. >> host: is it fair to say you are a supporter pam? >> guest: it's interesting that final chapter was very difficult to write. in fact i found myself, my footnotes for that chapter in the original draft started to run well over five to 600 footnotes in that one chapter which i think in the final draft came to 30 pages, i don't really know. at one point as i'm amassing more and more evidence because i wanted to make sure it was grounded by literally was sitting at my desk and i said

i've got to stop. if i were studying 1920s are the 19 teens i would have stopped amassing evidence a good 400 sources ago. it's time to quit. this is what i think happened as a historian. i suspect you are going to disagree with me. >> host: we will get there. >> guest: it is well sourced. it's not a diatribe. it was never intended to be a diatribe and much of this book came out in different ways than i expected it to. some of my favorite presidents ended up not being my favorite presidents anymore and some people that i really disliked i ended up favoring. >> host: what most surprised you during the writing of this book? >> guest: most surprising was 1893 and how it happened. they think would also surprise me was and this may shock people

but how relatively unimportant watergate turned out to be. watergate for me was what got me into political and economic history. it was huge in my life. when i did a book proposal expected i would have an entire chapter in watergate. the original draft was going to hinge on the watergate and we look at the sleep sweep of american history watergate is very important but it's not anywhere near as important in the scheme of american history as i thought it was. >> host: before we turn to the book what conservative or republican journals and magazines do you read from or draw from in the composition of this book? >> guest: the biggie is the national review. personally i'd read fairly widely across the spectrum. plus then you are going to the free beacon everyday i assume? >> guest: i go to the national media but i will start. >> host: i hope so as soon as this interview is over.

when we begin with the general question which is how would you summarize the basic thesis of your

why not write another book about the democratic party? >> guest: you know the issue here is that i like the 19th century and the democrats of the 19th century are not very interesting. some of them are and i can certainly talk about the democrats that the democrats are much more interesting in the 20th century which to my mind

is not as interesting as the 19th because it's the different set of questions. >> host: that does come across in the book your knowledge of the post-civil war history is very impressive and a passion comes through as well. it strikes me a mentioned this tension which i also identified in your book between the quality of opportunity and the property rights in the protection of property. i have two questions. one is typically those are not seen to be in conflict and to take a step back in the small l liberalism a foundational concept to thinkers like john locke or the founding fathers. my first question would be white if they conflict and my second one would be usually in the american political discourse it's not so much the quality versus property as quality versus liberty. so why property instead of liberty?

>> guest: first of all because it's property establishing the constitution established in the decoration of independence. it puts us in an american context. he is not an american founding father just to be clear. >> host: you would agree that he is a lock-in. >> guest: it's true but not all login ideas. that being said in the american context one of the factors in play here in addition to the conflict between opportunity and protection of property is expansion and the expansion of the american west. you can come up with new ways to construct a society that has limited space and you can argue about those ways that nothing will have changed as long as you are not expanding. once you add expansion you come up with new conflict. as soon as the american revolution is underway and there is a law that the americans cannot cross the appalachian

hamilton does it and it goes from virginia and kentucky opens up kentucky and has this new concept of what an american west is going to be. once he's there in kentucky and for various reasons goes back to the east coast of virginia and abraham lincoln's grandfather once he pours into kentucky what happens is a conflict, an obvious conflict in the region of virginia and kentucky between the idea that poor man like daniel boone can go out there and make a fortune versus the slaveowners the planters to come in and take over the legislature and take over the loss. so what the founding fathers see if it takes place in the 1790s and what they see as this conflict. can men actually rise in this new land or is that nuland going

to be taken over by a wealthy in this case slaveowners and then change the laws, manipulate the laws so they are able to amass land and property in their own hands? >> host: the abundance of free waited in the american west ignited this conflict between the drivers, the go west young man followers scrappy young entrepreneurs versus the interests of what you call and what they'll call during that time the slave power who wanted to extend their economy into that so far unsubtle land in the west. >> guest: yes. i'm going to get a professorial joke here. the whole thing is later but what i'm looking for here is the ideological context if you will

between these two quite legitimate quite important and quite fundamental principles. so what happens congress meeting under the articles of the federation and as you know they don't do a lot but one of the things they do that's important is everybody pays attention to their the fact that the northwest ordinance make sure there will be no slavery in becoming a midwestern state but the first things the northwest ordinance does is, one of the things is trying to do is to make sure power does not get amassed in and a small group because, not because they are objecting to the idea of people having stock but because of what that does to the concept of democracy. if a few people get too much and of course in this era the numbers we are talking about look ridiculously small but they look very big in those days is that few people get too much

they will by the press and they will buy their own representation and a legislature and congress. once they do that the laws will change so that individuals will no longer have a say in their government and they will not be able to have equal access to resources to be able to rely on their own in the whole concept of government which is what they're talking about. they're not talking about individual or well-being but the concept of creating a new kind of government. that whole concept will collapse. that's a concept that the founding fathers are struggling with if the northwest ordinance is based on early love thomas jefferson that they are struggling in that foundational period. >> host: let's turn to the creation of the republican party. what role did the kansas nebraska act play? guest of the kansas nebraska act is my favorite event in history. as the first of them to memorize.

the kansas nebraska act as central and the reason for that is the kansas nebraska act is 1854. it passes in 1854 and it's enormously important because it's an act that passes congress that condenses northern man on the make that there is the slave power, that the country really is in danger of falling under the power of a very small class of slaveowners who are going to monopolize the executive and legislative branch and with the passage of the kansas nebraska act which negates the missouri compromise they had previously guaranteed that the northwest, a huge huge piece of land would stay free and be accessible but that's now going to be open to slavery and like it says it's

only a hop skip and a jump until slavery is national. as the passage of the kansas nebraska act passing the senate in may of 1854 there's this really cool meeting that takes place in washington in the rooms of edward dickinson from massachusetts and another member of the house of representatives. he's a fun character because his daughters emily dickinson who visits her father sometimes in washington. they made in a select boarding house. they actually pick that room because that boarding houses the bess truman washington and 30 guys come together centralized around a group of three brothers who were in congress at the time represented by this represented by the state and they come to that meeting from a number of different parties but they leave that day saying we have got to start a new party that will stand against the slave power

and they began to call on republicans. their meetings all over the country against the kansas nebraska act and they see what becomes the republican party in 1856 but that meeting in dickinson's room in the boarding house of those 30 men is the growth of the republican party. >> host: i want to talk to you about the two men who identified as something of at the polls in your book. the first is abraham lincoln and the second is james henry hammond. starting with lincoln would you most admire about abraham lincoln? >> guest: that's an interesting question. i most admire about abraham lincoln and his brain. i think it's one of the brightest americans we have ever produced. he is one who has never gotten his due and disability to figure his way through problems without taking things personally.

he's an exceedingly bright man up against an impossible situation. he manages to walk -- for a long time. >> host: accorsi studied geometry and apply the method of reasoning that he saw in the book to the problems of the day. >> guest: logic matters. we don't teach logic anymore and we should because logic really matters and he was a very good practitioner. >> host: let's turn to james henry hammond. he's a figure that i was not familiar with before reading the book but he comes to take on great historical importance. he was from south carolina, a democrat. why was he important? >> guest: is a fascinating figure. he really is. you did know him. he probably just didn't know his name. he gave the speech that i talk so much about. he goes on to say we will win if we have a war because everyone has to have cotton.

but hammond is almost a cartoon character in any number of ways. especially not only to the slaves but the -- who were extraordinarily well connected. it was part of the wade hampton family. he had a very different view of america than men like abraham lincoln. he believed that the way a healthy society works and mind you he was living in one of the wealthiest societies in the world at the time. southern slave owners were enormously wealthy. they were well-educated. they owned beautiful paintings that they had on their walls and i mean rembrandt. i don't mean the ones that their daughters did. >> host: my daughter did a painting i have to say that is my most beautiful possession but i understand. >> guest: fair enough. they had reason to believe they have finally gotten it right.

and they were not making excuses to say this is why they got it right. they're not making stuff up. they are really wealthy and they are really well-educated. they think they really have good ideas. they live an extraordinary beautiful homes for the time and he believed that they had truly come up with the way society should work in the way society should work according to james hammond, what he argues in a speech before congress in 19 -- 1858 was that society was healthy when a few very well-educated, very wealthy men ran things because they were the only one with the education and the brains to do direct society as it should be done. the proof of that was the fact that they were so wealthy. god had honored them with wealth and the way a good society work was for them to direct the

labor. those lesser beings in the south are men and women of color but to those people james henry hammond believe they should not have education because that would only make some with more than they could get. they certainly shouldn't have any voice in american society. they shouldn't get much in the way of clothing or food because that was waste and money should travel upward so we create this extraordinarily intelligent powerful class. that was the way a healthy society would work and to see that i'm right look around you. one of the richest most educated people in the world, this must be the best way to do things. >> host: abraham lincoln as you mentioned was repudiating the doctrine and offering his own. could you give us a summary of back? >> guest: he says james henry

hammond calls the majority the mud sales. they are the foundation of society that they literally live in the mud. lincoln says this is not how a healthy society works. a healthy society works the exact opposite way. the workers who create value and not the people at the top. the people at the bottom can create value and a healthy six i.d. works in a way that those that have access to education resources they can produce and the more that they produce the more capital they will create the more they will afford other people in the a way to make the society advances to put government on the side of equality of opportunity for the average worker. >> host: later in your book you make direct connections between hammond and the movement of conservatism associated with

weymouth buckley and brent bozell who to help take over the republican party. wayzata fair comparison? >> guest: isn't that great? the conscience of the a conservative 1960 under barry goldwater's name, if you actually line data directly with james henry hammond's speech the points are almost point by point the same. i couldn't believe it when i found it. >> host: i couldn't find the defense of slavery in the conscience of a conservative. >> guest: it's not slavery. i'm sorry. the idea that government should work in such a way that you protect property because you create -- he does talk about society being directed by an elite rather than a democracy. the founding fathers did not set up a democracy because they were afraid of the redistribution of

wealth. certainly he was not advocating slavery and i want to make the point clear. >> host: you say in another part of the book that he wanted to -- >> guest: he said that. that's in the national review. >> host: when you say someone wants to to return the world to pre-civil war. >> guest: he didn't say that -- i didn't say that, he said that. i was in the national review. >> host: do you think that frank myers believes according to your citation that he wanted to reach into slavery in the united states? >> guest: i think you are putting words in my mouth. >> host: i'm asking you a question. >> guest: i'm trying to answer the question that you will have to let me finish the sentence. that concept, that idea that a small educated and wealthy class should direct society is the same in these different areas. now before you get angry about that.

>> host: i'm not angry. >> guest: that's not an illegitimate argument. it's not one that i happen to adhere to but it's not an argument that you can inherently say somebody is attacking you if you hold that. society was very successful that way. that's not the way the republican party the republican party has done that but it's not an attack to say that people believe that. >> host: you say in today's america associated public figure with slavery is a negative. >> guest: let me be clear. you're the one he keeps talking about how i'm saying they want slavery. >> host: james henry hammond was the one i was talking about it. >> guest: is the same under james henry hammond as it is under conscience of a conservative. you can disagree with that but he can't say they are not the same.

they just are. >> host: i find a real emphasis under liberty and the longest chapter is conscious of its conservative is the longest chapter. >> guest: that's quite a leap because when i talk about communism i talk about the fear of communism coming out of 1870s. hammond does talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth so it's a big problem in his speech and the big problem throughout american history and a huge problem for the conservative. but that is ahistorical to suggest that james henry hammond is not talking about that. >> host: again barry goldwate goldwater, it looks like actually one thing that i did find interesting was your discussion of -- how that

interested you with american politics which is i don't think the story that has been told at all. >> guest: it's been told by a few academics but it's a fascinating story not least because of the material that could not make it into the short of that book and that's the reason americans have heard so much about the paris commune because there was only one foreign observer left in the city during the paris commune and it was a man who is in line to be the next republican nominee. he ended up getting the nomination but they let him stay and he actually sent out dispatches. great story. the paris commune happens after the war in the march through may of 1871. americans have just laid down the first transatlantic cable. they have getting news dispatches across the cable from the franco prussian war about what was going on and people

read the newspapers. when the war and that there wasn't much going on. the birds to keep the cables popping and in order to promote the candidacy of the observer in paris the republican newspapers trumpeted the paris commune. i'm i am not a scholar of france. i have no idea what was happening in paris but what shows up in the american newspapers is that workers have taken over the city. they kill a bunch of priests and most shocking to american women filled bottles with this newfangled stuff call petroleum lit it on fire and they were tossing it into the buildings and blowing up buildings. >> host: is that later were called the molotov cocktail? >> guest: i. >> guest: but people in the south democrats in the south were not getting any traction in the north in northern politics cap saying that in america after

1871 african-americans are going to be voting they are going to go to redistribute wealth. they are going to destroy society and try to take everything for themselves. their workers returning the world upside down. northerners are like whatever you southern democrats just want war. then they look to what's happening in paris and in paris it looks like this exactly what southern democrats are saying is happening in the south. this starts to get traction from the concept of having workers participate in governance. it's a phenomenal story. the lithograph, to really major event. >> host: i believe one thing you say is that the specter of the workers taking over government and appropriating wealth of the rich really deals with death blow to the original man cownie and vision of the republican party. >> guest: again for more

complicated reasons than i can go into in the book but the lynchpin of 19th century politics is new york. it's way more electoral votes for anyone in the country and a lynchpin in new york is of course new york city. in order to hold new york state have to hold new york city and new york city is held by the democratic machine. republicans in new york city grab ahold of this idea to say look you got to stop the democratic immigrants from voting because if you do they are going to take over the government they're going to redistribute wealth. from within the republican party this gets picked up and gets blown up nationally for other reasons in 1872 with the re-election of grant and from then it becomes a trope for american society from then on. >> host: let's go to the point where lincoln has rediscovered. what was the connection between teddy roosevelt's imperialism

and his domestic policy? >> guest: that's another interesting part about the book i did not expect. the domestic policy comes out of the imperialism rather than the other way around which i would not have thought. teddy roosevelt, interesting character and one of those that i did not like as much when i finish the book as i did when i started. he didn't do very much. he talked a lot. what's the old joke about he ran out of the letter i when he tried to write his speeches. he doesn't accomplish as much as everybody thinks he does because of what he's up against. teddy roosevelt reveres lincoln and is concerned about the drift of the party in the late 19th century. one of the things that the party does is it argues that it is in the 1880s and 1890s is that

it is a party that advances morality and individual responsibility and individual uplift if you wealth. for various reasons largely because he supports the navy so much and is very close friends with henry cabot lodge who also supports the navy and alfred nejat who writes an important book about the navy did begin to say you'd need to take this morality oversees with the arrival of the concentration policy in cuba by the spanish. people like teddy roosevelt say we have got to spread morality to places like cuba and if we do that at the international level you have to bring that home. you have to have an example at home to prove to the world that america is as good as they say it isn't a classic case we had better clean up the tenements and we had better get kids into school and literally that dead horses off the street because in

the 19th century we don't have sanitation systems or water systems. those have to be fixed in home. so it's kind of her first. >> host: fascinating and due you also discuss robert levant a progressive republican. tell us about him. >> guest: another man that is much more colorful on paper than that i suspect he was in real life. he is a little bit different. levant henry cabot lodge and roosevelt all have their political in an election of 1884 when the republican candidate is corrupt enough and in the pocket of big business that he loses to cleveland at democrat after the civil war and they end up deciding to stick with the party but to clean up the party.

they stick with the party for the next decade but by the time they come to age in the 1890s they want to reform the republican party in such a way that is accessible to the man on the make is supposed to the industrialist, the people to the robber barons who are controlling the senate and therefore controlling legislation. >> host: so he -- were they successful in terms of cleaning up the republican party? >> guest: he's different from many others because laffont comes out of wisconsin and wisconsin is the heart of the granger movement and the granger movement, this is a movement where the state legislature has tried to reign in the power of grain elevators for example, rein in the power of monopolies in the midwest and he's strongly influenced by the idea that you should be able to use the apparatus of state and national governments to reign in

especially monopolies but to make sure legislation is not skewed too much towards business. not the same background of course the teddy roosevelt and albert beverage and cabot lodge, silver spoon, not beverage but the other two come from. he brings that into into the party so he's different. do they rework the party? absolutely. this is where you get the return back to lincoln's language of man on the make and an even-handed government that works for everybody and they do it very explicitly. teddy roosevelt are liberally echoed lincoln and says he is echoing lincoln and stands up for lincoln and says he is lincoln spokesman. it doesn't get more link on in them that during his presidency. >> host: one thing i was fascinated by in your book is again and again we talk about how and i'm paraphrasing obviously but when the link on

in languages forgotten and financial leads and business leads are able to accumulate great wealth and influence the political system it's almost like a rubber band in your narrative. there's some type type of recession or great depression that comes back. how did you formulate this thesis? was there any economics you any economics uterine? i saw john kenneth galbraith decided -- this is a pattern he discerned in history that depressions are caused by inequality of wealth? >> guest: you are asking about my entire graduate career. what have i drawn? i'm a little gob smacked simply because i mean the footnotes only have for the most part primary sources because of the sheer length. obviously i think keynes was onto something. >> host: friedmans in schwartz's interpretation is not

mentioned. was there a reason for that? >> guest: friedman is mentioned. the reason for that is that i think if you look at the numbers it is by contention that if you look at the numbers america is the healthiest when wealth is widespread. when i was just starting in business and was into ideology which is another thing i care about which is language in a way to use which is in a marvelously powerful thing. we don't pay enough attention. i had an older friend in the depression and no matter what i said she would say who got the money. if you follow the money what you would find is when the wealth is widely distributed that country seems to do better. and when it starts to concentrate there is a crash.

and that's a simple level discernible through the actual historical events at the time. economist and historical economists which are far more important to my business have all kinds of ways of looking at the different periods especially the late 19th century and there's a series of studies out of stanford starting in 1900 to try to break down different ways and how that happens. very important and a small time but if you look at the larger question of the nature of america and if you look at american politics it seems more sense to go big. >> host: let's look at eisenhower the third present in your narrative. his only political experience before becoming president before the torch and mckinley -- there's a fantastic image of the young ike.

what role did foreign policies bring in bringing eisenhower and? >> guest: eisenhower got involved in politics because he was determined to stop taft but more importantly to me and that's what's pursuing and we can talk about that. he gets involved in politics he is so horrified by fascism and horrified viscerally by -- concentration camp. if you read his writings he is an extraordinarily intelligent man, very measured writing. the letter he writes, he is shattered. it doesn't happen immediately but there's no secret if you have read his diaries are his letters or his books as well. he comes to believe that the

world is on the brink of annihilation. the only thing standing between today, 1950s and 1940s and nuclear annihilation is the even distribution of wealth. i'm sorry, i put that badly. not the equal distribution of wealth, the ability of people to -- because if you have extremes of inequality of wealth they create a world in which it would be all too easy for political or religious extremists to gather followers, together dispossessed followers either culturally or economically. so he was extraordinarily interventionist man because he wanted the world everywhere, individuals everywhere to feel that they were not dispossessed. not because he had a moral

imperative to do it but because if they did feel like they were in trouble either culturally or economically they were prime fodder for a dictator either fascist or communist or religious. he wasn't particular. he didn't like any of them to have huge numbers of followers. they could literally destroy the world. this is really a profound argument that i don't people have given him enough credit for. he wasn't just out there screwing around with the lawn or making a mess of vietnam more than any of the things that people complain about. he really did think that america had a crucial role to play in saving the world and it was well thought out and very intelligent argument. >> host: we always think of the 60s and 70's as these very tumultuous decades filled with political and intellectual and cultural -- but one of the things that comes across in your book that i thought in the 50s

were also a very wild time because this is when you start having the real kind of beginnings of the civil rights movement of the 1950s. prior to the civil rights act of 64 and the national review in 1955 in the beginning of what becomes conservatism. you describe some of william f. buckley jr.'s writings in the 1950s as rants and they would be dismissed as friends limits and yet when buckley died in 2008 he was kind of lauded by folks on the right and left and held up as an example by the left of a good conservative. what is your interpretation of the change in perception? >> guest: i would like to get to that. let me say in times of the ferment of the 1950s one of the people -- pieces that people don't make a connection between as they look extraordinarily

like the 1870s. in both cases coming out of the traumatic war in support of minorities and women who don't have rights in the new nation. in both cases you get women's rights in african-american rights. you get native american rights in both cases you get a redefinition of american citizenship which i think is crucial in the 50s are not just about the candy cars. they are about deciding who should be a member of the nation. buckley of course was young when he wrote godman and yale. he was just out of yale. have you read a? >> host: i have. >> guest: it's not a great book. it's not well-written as well not well-written as well argue. he learns as he goes on and there are -- that are badly edited and written. he's going to get better as he gets older. one of the things when he dies is his quite gentile argument if you will, his elite argument

that he made in the 50s at least and god men and yale, mccarthy is not a gentle book. it's almost quaint and respectable. his yale education would have them read out the party. i think the movement moves. >> i didn't go to yell but george w. bush dropped out of io. >> guest: george bush talk more about his crawford ranch and that's not a reflection of him so much as where the party rent. >> host: ted cruz with the princeton harvard education i don't see him being run out of the party either. let me talk to about the reagan revolution.

and you make a fascinating argument going to the idea of the west as a playground where all of these different forces interact. >> guest: the west playground, i like that. >> host: you talk about how reagan and uber conservatives played off of the idea of the cowboy and a self-starter when also launching a defense buildup that helps communities in the west. >> guest: straight out of reconstruction. the west is fascinating. you can spend your whole life studying it but it's worth noting that the american cowboy was american -- and armor so short-lived but he lived during reconstruction. 1866 to 1886.

that's 20 years and those are the 20 years of reconstruction. when you think about reconstruction and what you remember about reconstruction you probably can't name very many african-american leaders and you probably can't mention any labor leaders and you maybe could come up with elizabeth cady stanton. >> host: i feel like you are judging me professor. >> guest: i didn't mean you in particular. everybody knows the american cowboy. everybody all over the world mostly american cowboy. what i have argued in previous work and obviously i think is right is that one of the central themes of reconstruction was the argument on behalf of southern democrats that the republicans had created a behemoth government that was taxing americans because republicans invent taxes during the civil war. it was taxing americans to support black people.

and the seniors the west opens up in the west opens up because americans poured money into the west in the civil war and after the civil war with the rovers and the indian war and the land surveys and damning and irrigation. they are pouring money out there but especially in the southern plains newspapers what you get is a region that is run solely by individuals by these hard-working cowboys who don't want anything but to work their own way up. it's an image that people like buffalo bill tap into for popular entertainment. it plays hugely and american south but also an american city but it's an image that catches on. the cowboy, the westerner, the individual up against the government and that's a scene that resonates from jesse james who is a criminal who you just mentioned who murders people that comes an individual who

stands against the government which is trying to kill him. by coupling means an individual who is working his way up. cowboys were not in fact -- it's an image in american society and it's the reason that her olympic teams wear cowboy hats. >> host: have both parties played off of that image or is it a conservative/republican thing? i'm curious. >> guest: that bad history of the west is not uniform. it's a very important image in the 1870s and the 1880s and to some degree and 1890s and the spanish-american war. teddy roosevelt roughriders retained after the roughriders in buffalo bill's wild west show. the earliest 20th century the western chemistry phase and during the depression nobody wants to be from the west. those are the okies and the

artiste and they don't want anything to do that. the western imagery takes a downturn and pops back up and takes off after brown v. board. the 1960s all over american tv westerns. for example levis go from being on james dean and his movie to everywhere. the sales of levis take off and up polls from the same themes that dominate america during construction. >> host: let me ask you at one point you talk about watergate and you write and i "back the paranoia inherent in conservatism or he could you elaborate about that? am i paranoid? i i'm a little bit shocked. i'm not paranoia and i don't even know it. >> guest: i don't have every word of the book memories but i think you are referring to when nixon resigned and he refused to

accept any responsibility for anything he had done and what i was referring to there was's argument that he makes in that speech and in this memoir that he was taken down by liberal media and the whole concept of the liberal media as you know comes out of william f. buckley jr.'s mccarthy's enemies. >> host: that's a paranoid attitude? >> guest: berkeley barkley is making an intellectual -- the entire new deal coalition. >> host: the paranoia attaches more nixon than current -- conservatism so i don't have to go to a psychiatrist after this interview quite of a few more minutes. one thing at the end of your book is what does the link on the agenda look like today? we have seen some attempts by

the barack obama and jill biden administration you mention very briefly but my reading of the economic data is not borne out. in your reading of history what is necessary to return? if i were a republican politician having read your book and i call professor richardson up on the fun and i said i want to return to the link on the envision, what can i do? what would you tell me? >> guest: it's a formula and the formula is education. a government that is not beholden to people at the bottom or the top of the spectrum and it's easier to do rhetorically than it is to do necessarily with policy. its education and a government that's not beholden to people at the top or the bottom of the spectrum. it's equality of opportunity.

it's something not unlike you have written about in the past. the problem is that it takes an outsider like lincoln, teddy roosevelt or eisenhower to throughout the public apparatus and to say that's the way we used to do it. if my e-mail is an indicator and of course the plural of anecdote is not data there are a lot of people who would like to see the republican party do that. >> host: it strikes me as you talk about education for example republicans embrace school choice and charter school movement and have waged campaigns against teachers unions. how does that fit into education reform and is that a linkov and tactic? >> guest: no it's not at all a linkov and tactic. the idea that we should have widespread affordable good

education including at the higher-level because republicans started our state universities is of course. the rest of them came from the lincoln republicans and essential to democracy. the cuts we have had in education since the 80s have been absolutely untrue to republican. >> host: as we speak today one of the major causes of the so-called movement of conservatives is extra right -- destroying the ex-im bank the institution that gives loans to corporations like boeing. that seems to me like a lynn cohen in thing. am i wrong? >> guest: i am a profit of the past is just so you know. i find that very interesting. this i think is probably more than we have time for. this might be the rock on which the modern-day republican party

sets which may be a good place to end this because by the time you and i argue about the ex-im bank everyone will be asleep. >> host: fascinating professor and as someone who believes xm should be defunded and someone who is disappointed in the republican leadership for protecting it i hope you are right. i hope it is the rock in which so-called reformed conservatives can galvanize. we will read about it in the sequel to your history. professor richardson thank you for joining us. i am matthew continetti and this is sublime. this is "after words."