answer to that has been -- has got to be a sort of broadening of the question. wealthy people have always had more power than people without money. people who owned newspapers have always had more money than people who don't. people who have access to the press have always had more than other people. that is the way of the world. the question is what sort of freedom of speech shall we allow in the free society? and the burden on those of us that are taking the side as it were than i have in this area is to try to do a better job of bringing back home to the real people out there. ..

[applause] [inaudible conversations]

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 once 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.

>> host: hello i am heather cox richardson editor of the washington free begin and you can follow me on twitter at continetti. 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. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> host: how long have you been teaching at boston college? >> guest: this is my fourth year at boston college but i've been teaching since 1987. >> host: what class did you teach? >> guest: politics and economics but pretty much anything they want to throw at me. >> host: what is the most unusual course you have taught? >> guest: a course in the history of comic books in the 1970s. >> host: preparing a second book on comic books? >> guest: no. >> host: why a book about the republican party? >> guest: i'm a scholar of their broken party.

i studied economic and i teach in american history so moving into the 20 century the republican party seemed a no-brainer. >> host: when did you have an idea of this particular but? >> 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 so it took you much of a decade or more to write a? >> guest: took me more than a decade to think about it. it took me four years to write it. >> host: who would you say is the intended audience for a book like this? >> guest: is intended for a popular audience. it is theoretically informed that you would not know that reading it. it's a bunch of great stories that tell the largest issues of the american past in a way that i hope it's fun and adjustable.

>> host: how would you describe your own politics? >> guest: i am a historian. that is how i would describe my own politics. people who read my work from the left insist that i'm afar ready and people who read my work from me right same a far lefty. i'm historian and i look at what happens and i say what happens. >> host: would you say many republicans are on the faculty at you see? >> guest: i don't know they don't really talk about it. >> host: they are just tight to their profession. they don't really have politics? >> guest: i think we divide politically according to issue. i don't know how people vote nau. >> host: what is your sense of the student population that you have been teaching? have there have been any political shifts among students? had they been more conservative in the 80s or in more liberal today? >> guest: 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 students who come to u i get

enormous numbers of republican students who are about who are up with a republican in and say i'm a republican like you which i answer a math professor who studies history so i don't think i have a very good sense of what the young people are doing right now because they are self-selecting to work with me because they think a mother right. >> host: i'm struck by you saying that you don't really have a political bent. the final chapter this book the conclusion is they were both toward barack obama at least from my writer and a reader. that was the sense i got. is it fair to say? >> guest: he's not in the final chapter. >> host: you in the conclusion i believe. >> guest: has assembled. >> host: what you think it's fair to say you are a supporter pam? >> guest: it's interesting the final chapter was very difficult to write. in fact i found myself my footnotes for that chapter in the original draft and the original draft started around well over five or 600 footnotes

in that one chapter which i think amounted to 30 pages. at one point i'm amassing more and more evidence because i wanted to make sure it was crowded. and if i were studying the 1920s are the 19 teens or the 1880s 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 think it's right and i suspect you will disagree with me. >> host: we will get there. >> guest: it is well sourced. it was never intended to be a diatribe in much of this book came out in very different ways and i expect them to. some of my favorite presidents ended up not being my favorite presidents anymore and some people i didn't really like at all i ended coming up a really

short. >> host: what most surprised you during the writing of this but? >> guest: i think what most surprised me was the panic of 1983 and how it happened. i think what also surprised me was and this may shock people by how relatively important 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 i expected i would have an entire chapter in watergate. the original draft was going to hinge on watergate and when you look at the sleep of american history watergate is very important but it is not anywhere near as important in the scheme of american history as i thought it was. >> before we turn to the book what conservatives or republicans journals or magazines do you read or draw from in the composition of this book? >> the biggie in the 20th century is of course is the review. personally i read fairly widely across the spectrum.

>> host: and you are going to the free beacon everyday i assume? >> guest: actually go to "the weekly standard" and the national review. but i will start. >> host: i hope so as soon as this interview is over. why don't we just begin with a very general question which is how would you summarize the basic thesis of your book? "to make men free"? >> guest: there's a large thesis in the book and that is one of the central themes in american history is the conflict between the declaration of independence in the constitution. the declaration of independence set for the concept that america is a land of equal opportunity not of equal outcome but of equal rigidity. it was a great principle, the principle on which they rally to fight the american revolution but it was not the founding law of the country. but the binding law was the constitution by the time the founding fathers were writing the constitution they were concerned for something different than they were when

jefferson wrote the declaration of independence. they were concerned about the protection of property. that became another founding principle of america the protection of property. the conflict between equality of opportunity in the protection of property has never been fully resolved in american society. the republican party i argue was the political arm that set out to resolve that profound conflicts. so there's a thesis about their book and party but the larger question is a question for america whether or not they care about the republican party or the democratic party or any party at all and that is how do you resolve the conflict between equal opportunity in the protection of property both of which are legitimate and very important founding principles for this nation. >> one question i had while reading your book gives why not write another book about the democratic party? >> guest: you know i am fascinated by the democratic party so the issue here is that

i liked the 19th century and the democrats in 19th century not very interesting. some of them are and i can certainly talk about the democrats but the democrats are much more interesting in the 20th century which to my mind is not as interesting as the 19th because it's a different set of questions. >> that does come across in the book to match your knowledge of post-civil war history, very impressive and the passion comes through as well. you mentioned this tension which i also identified in your book between equality of opportunity and the property rights in the protection of property. i guess i have two questions. one is typically those are not seen to be in conflict and kind of taking a step back talking about small al liberalism. these are a foundational concept to thinkers like john locke were the founding fathers. so my first question would be wide of the conflict?

my second one would be mutually in american political discourse it's not so much equality versus property as a quality versus liberty. so why property instead of liberty? >> first of all because it's property of the constitution versus equality established in the declaration of independence. to put this in the american context locke place in funny ways america and is not america's founding fathers just to be clear. >> host: but you would agree on blocking ideas. >> guest: not on all lucky and ideas but that being said in the american context one of the factors in play here in addition to the conflict between the party of opportunity and protection of opportunity is expansion and expansion into 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 and nothing will have changed as long as you are not expanding. once you add expansion today, but conflict so as soon as the american revolution is underway and there is a law that the americans cannot cross the appalachian daniel boone does it in because across the appalachian from virginia to kentucky opens up and tacky and we have this new concept of what an american west is going to be. once he's there in kentucky and for various reasons that filters back to the east coast of virginia and affects people like abraham lincoln's grandfather once people start to point to kentucky what happens is a complex a very explicit obvious conflict, it's not a state actually put a region in 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 laws. so what the founding fathers say because this will take place in the 1790s. what they see as this conflict. ken bennett actually rise in this new land or is that nuland going to be taken over by wealthy and in this case slaveowners who then change the law and manipulate the laws so that they are able to a amass land and property in their own hands? >> host: said the abundance of free land in the american west ignited this conflict between the strivers you know the go west young man followers, scrap the young entrepreneurs. >> guest: that's later, yes. >> host: versus what they are called during that time the slave power who also wanted to expand their economy into that

so far unsettled land in the west. >> guest: yes. i'm going to be a professorial here. what i'm looking for here is the ideological conflict if you will between these two quite legitimate quite important and quite fundamental principles. so what happens, you have the congress under the article of confederation -- you know they don't do a lot but one thing that they do that is very important in northwest oregon everybody pays attention to the lack of slaves with the northwest ordinance making sure there will be no slavery in what becomes the midwestern states that the first thing the northwest does is one of the things is trying to do to make sure that power does not get the mast in any group, 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 area the numbers we are talking about are ridiculously small but they looked very big in those days. if a few people get too much they will bite the press and they will buy their own representation in the legislature to 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 rise write on their own. the whole concept of government which is what they are talking about most period they are not talking about individual well-being or what is socially good burn it out there talking about a concept of creating a new type of government. that whole concept will collapse. that's a concept that the founding fathers are struggling with if the northwest agency is based on but they are struggling

within that foundational period period. >> let's turn to the creation of the republican party. what role did the kansas nebraska act play in that? >> guest: the kansas nebraska act as my favorite event in american history. it's as the first event i ever memorized. it's one of the few that i cannot come up with. the kansas nebraska act is central and the reason for that is the kansas nebraska act is 1854. it passes in the spring of 1854 and it's anonymously important because it is the act that passes congress that condenses northern man, north and men on the make that there is the slave power that you mention, that the country really is in danger of falling into the power of a very small class of slaveowners who are going to monopolize the executive legislative branch and the court and it passes the

nebraska act which negates the compromise that guaranteed that the northwest a huge huge piece of land would stay free and be accessible to poor man. that is now going to deal with slavery and lincoln said it's only a hop skip and jump until slavery is national. after the passage of the kansas nebraska act to the house of representatives in may of 1854, the people point to wisconsin's birthers is 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 and he is a fun character because his daughters emily dickinson. she actually follows him to washington. they meet in their rooms and a select boarding house and they take that -- pick babraham is the boarding house has the best food in washington. 30 guys come together

centralized actually around a group of three brothers who in congress at the time 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 themselves republicans. there are meetings all over the country against the kansas nebraska act that may feed into what is the republican party. but that meeting in dickinson's room at the boardinghouse of those 30 minutes the germ of the republican party. it's wonderful. imagine those guys. >> host: i want to talk to about kind of the two men identified as something that pulls in your book. the first is abraham lincoln and the second is james henry hammond. i'm going to start with lincoln. what do you most admire about abraham lincoln? >> guest: i most admire about abraham lincoln is his brain.

i think is one the brightest america has ever produced and eisenhower is another who has never gotten his due. and disability to figure his way through a problem without taking things personally. he's an exceedingly bright band up against an impossible situation who manages to walk a nice edge for a very long time. >> host: of course he study geometry and apply the method of reasoning based on the book to the problems of the day. fascinating. >> guest: logic matters. we don't teach logic anymore and we should because logic matters. >> host: let's turn to james henry hammond. he's a figure that i was not familiar with their forwarding your buddy comes on to take on great historical -- historical importance. he was a senator from south carolina, he was a democrat. why was important? >> guest: james henry hammond

is a fascinating figure. you did know him, you probably just didn't know his name. he gave the speech that i talk about called the mudsill speech where he goes on to say cotton is king and we will win if we go to work because everyone eats cotton. hamilton -- hammond is almost a cartoon character in a number of ways. he was sexually abusive not only to slaves but often too -- who were extraordinarily well-connected and i 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 worked and mind you he was moving 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 rembrandts.

i don't mean once their daughters did. >> host: my daughter did a painting i have to say and it's a beautiful possession but i understand your point. >> guest: fair enough. they have reason to believe they had finally gotten it right. and they were not making excuses to say this is why they got it right. they are not making this stuff up. they are really wealthy and they are really well-educated. they think they have good ideas and they live in extraordinarily beautiful homes for the time. he believed that they had truly come up with the way the society works and the way the society worked according to men like james henry hammond and is not the only one but his speech was too good to use because lincoln explicitly response to it. what he argues in a speech before congress in 1858 was that society was healthiest when a few very well-educated, very wealthy men ran things.

they were the only ones that had the education of brains to direct society as it should be done. the proof of that was the fact that they were so wealthy. god had honored them with extraordinary wealth. the way a good society worked was for them to direct the labor of lesser beings. those lesser beings were men and women of color but to those people james hammer he handed believe they should not have education because i would only make some groveling and lot more than they should get and they should certainly not have been a force in american society. they shouldn't get much in the way of clothing or food because that would be wasted on them that money should travel upward so it won't recur -- create extraordinarily intelligent powerful class and that was the way a healthy society would work pretty sad to see that i'm right and he says this in his speech, look around you. we are the richest most educated people in the world.

this must be the one best way to do it. >> host: so of course abraham lincoln as you mentioned was speaking at the wisconsin agricultural fair repudiating this. could you give us a summary back? >> guest: he says james henry hammond calls the general society mudsills so they are the foundation of society but they literally live in the mud. lincoln says this is not how a healthy society works. a healthy society works the exact opposite way. that is if the workers that create value, not the people at the top of that heat, the people at the bottom of the heat create value in a healthy society works in such a way that those people have access to education and to resources so that they can produce and the more that they produce the more capital but it will create, the more they will employ the people in the way

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 of movement of conservatism, anti-activists associated with william f. buckley and brent bozell who helped take over the republican party. why is that a fair comparison? >> guest: isn't that great? i couldn't believe i found that. the conscience of the conservative 1960 under barry goldwater's name written by brent bozell if you line up directly with james henry hammond speech the points are almost point by point the same. i couldn't believe it. >> host: i couldn't find the content to slavery in "the conscience of a conservative." hammond's major issue. >> guest: no but the idea that government should work in such a

way that you protect property because you create it. he does talk about society being directed finally rather than a democracy. he said the founding fathers did not set up a democracy because they were afraid of the redistribution of wealth. certainly lavelle was not advocating slavery and i want to make that clear. huskies in another part of your book that you wanted to return to world to 1860. >> guest: that's in the national review. >> host: when you say someone wants to return to pre-civil war. >> guest: i didn't say that. he said that. brent bozell didn't say that in the national review. that was in the national review. >> host: according to your citation to believe he wanted to raise it to you slavery in united states? >> guest: i think you are putting words in my mouth. tesco i'm asking a question. >> guest: and training is the question but you'll have to let me finish my sentence.

that concept, that idea that a small educated and wealthy classes should direct society is the same in these different periods. now before you get angry about that. >> host: i'm not angry. >> guest: that's not an illegitimate argument. it's not one i happen to adhere to but it's not an argument that you can inherently say somebody is attacking you in the hope that. there are an awful lot of societies that work successfully that way. that is not the way the republican party started but it's not an attack to say somebody believes that. it works well for a long time. >> host: you say today's america associate a public figure with slavery is a negative. >> guest: let me be clear. you are the one that keeps talking about how i'm saying that they want -. >> host: james henry hammond was the one talking about

slavery. >> guest: the concept of how it should be ordered is the same under james henry hammond. you can disagree with that and you can come back and save that's not the way you wanted society ordered but you can't say they are not the same if you have read both documents. they just are. >> host: i find a real emphasis on liberty and i believe that's the longest chapter in the conscience of this conservative -- "the conscience of a conservative." >> guest: that's quite a leap because when i talk about communism i talk about the fear of communism coming our chat of the 1870s. hammond does talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth and it's a very big problem in his speech and to the problem throughout the rest of american history and it's a huge problem for the looming conservative. but that is a historical that --

i don't suggest that james henry hammond talks about that. >> host: barry goldwater talked about it. actually one thing that i found interesting was your discussion of the paris commune. >> guest: that's a great moment. >> host: how that interfered with american politics which is a story that i think has been told at all. >> guest: has been told by a few academics but it is a fascinating story. not least because the material that could not make it into the shorter book and that is the reason americans 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 didn't end up getting the nomination but they let him stay and he actually sent out dispatches by poland. a great story. the paris commune happens in obviously paris after the franco

prussian war from march through may of 1871 and it is very important in america because americans have just laid down their first successful trans-atlantic cable. they have been getting news dispatches across the cable from the franco prussian war relevant to what's going going on and people read the newspapers you read what was happening in the war but when the war and that there wasn't much going on. in order to keep those cables popping in order to promote the candidacy of the observer in paris and washburn the republican newspapers trumpeted the paris commune. now i am not a follower of -- i had no idea what was happening in paris but what shows up in american the american newspapers is that workers had taken over the city. they have kill a bunch of priests and mow shocking to american women filled bottles with this newfangled stuff called petroleum, let it on fire and tossed into the building symbol of the buildings.

>> host: was at the beginning of what was later called the molotov cocktail? >> guest: i guesto budget combines reconstruction because people in the south, democrats in the south who are not getting any traction in the north american politics keep saying in america after 1871 african-americans are going to be voting they are going to vote to redistribute wealth. they're going to destroy society and try to take everything for themselves. their workers returning the turning the world upside down. northerners are like yeah whatever. you are southern democrats and then i look at what's happening in paris and in paris it looks like exactly what southern democrats are saying is happening in the south. this starts to get traction for the whole concept of having workers participate in government is a very dangerous thing. you know it's a phenomenal story. the lithograph. it's a really major event in history. >> host: i believe one thing

you say is the specter of the workers taking over government and appropriating the wealth of the rich, it really deals a death blow to the original lincolnian vision of the repugnant party. >> guest: this is in your post and party because again for more complicated reasons than i could go to in the book but the lynchpin of 19th century politics is new york. it has way more electoral votes than anyone the country and the lynchpin in new york is of course new york city. upstate new york is republican, new york city is democratic. in order to hold new york state you have to hold new york city and new york city is held by the democratic machine run by immigrants. the republicans grab ahold of this idea to say look you have to stop democratic immigrants from voting because if you do they are going to take over the government and they will redistribute wealth. from within the republican party this gets picked up and it gets

blown up nationally for other reasons in 181972 the re-election of grant and from there becomes a trophy of american society from then on. >> host: let's go to the point where lincoln's philosophy of government is rediscovered. what was the connection between teddy roosevelt's imperialism and his domestic policy? >> guest: that's another interesting part of the book that i did not expect. the domestic policy comes out of 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 then when i started. he doesn't do very much. he talks a lot. the old joke about they ran out of the letter i when they try to print a feature but he doesn't accomplish as much as everybody think he does because of what he's up against. but teddy roosevelt is revered

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 in the 1880s and 1890s, it is a party that advances morality and individual responsibility and individual uplift if you will. for various reasons largely because of course the navy is close friends with henry cabot lodge who supports the navy and also with -- who writes an important book about the navy they begin to say you need to deal 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 you do that at the international level you have to bring that

home. you have to have an example at home approved to the world that america is as good as we say it is and if that's the case we had better clean up the tenements and we better keep kids in school and literally get the dead horses up the street because of course the late teen 19th century we don't have water systems and we don't have any those things. those have to be fixed at home so it's kind of reversed. >> host: fascinating and you also discuss robert laffont of wisconsin agri- progressive republican. >> guest: another man that is much more colorful on paper than i suspected he was realized. he was interesting. at least i found them so. he is a little bit different. laffont, cabot lodge, roosevelt all have their political epiphanies in the election of 1884 when the republican

candidate is corrupt enough and so in the pocket of big business that he loses to cleveland a 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 of age in the 1890s they want to reform the republican party in such a way that is accessible again to men on the make as opposed to the industrialists the robber barons at that point who at that point or controlling the senate and therefore controlling legislation. >> host: and so he was part of -- were they successful in terms of cleaning up the republican party? >> guest: he's different from the others because laffont comes out of wisconsin and wisconsin is the heart of the granger movement. he was influenced by the granger movement. this was a movement where the

state legislature has tried to reign in the power of grain elevators for example, rein in the power monopolies in the midwest and he is strongly influenced by the idea that you should be able to use the apparatus of state and national government to reign in especially monopolies. that's not the same background of course but teddy roosevelt and albert beverage and cabot lodge, not beverage but the other two, come from. so he brings that into the party so he is different. do they rework the party? absolutely. this is where he gets the return back to lincoln's language of man on the make and even-handed government that works for everybody and they do it very explicitly. teddy roosevelt deliberately echoes lincoln and says he is echoing lincoln and stands up for lincoln and says he is lincoln spokesman. it doesn't get more lincolnian

than that during his presidency. >> host: one thing i was fascinated by in your book is again and again we talk about and i'm paraphrasing obviously but when the lincolnian language is forgotten and financial or business fleets are able to accumulate great wealth and influence the political system it's almost like a rubber band in your narrative. there are some type of financial panic or recession that comes back. how did you formulate this thesis? were there any economics that you drew? i saw that john kenneth galbraith, says the pattern you discerned in history that depressions were 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 of them. obviously i think keynes was onto something. >> host: items for example that friedman and schwartz interpretation is not mentioned. was their reason for that? >> guest: friedman is mentioned. the reason for that is that i think if you look at the numbers it is my contention that if you look at the numbers america is the healthiest when wealth is widespread. when i was just starting in this business and was very into ideology which is the other thing i care much about his language and the weights used which i think is an enormous but powerful thing. i think we don't pay enough attention to that. i had an older friend that lived through the depression and no matter what i said she would say who got the money?

who got the money hacker follow the money and if you follow the money what you would find is that when the wealthy seem to do better reform seem to happen and when it starts to concentrate there is a crash and that's at a very simple level discernible through the actual historical events of the time. now a economist if you read them and historical economists which are far more important to my business have all kinds of ways of looking at the different. especially the late 19th century and is a great series of studies on the stanford starting in 1900 to try to break down exactly different ways like how that happened. fine, very important in the long-term but if you try to look at the larger question of the nature of america and american political parties it has to go big. >> host: dallas gets eisenhower.

you have this fantastic act in a book about really his only political experience before becoming president was carrying the torch in the mckinley race and i thought that was just such a fantastic image of a young tyke back. what role again did foreign-policy bring, play in bringing eisenhower to politics? >> guest: eisenhower was determined to stop -- but again more importantly to me and that's worth pursuing and we can talk about that, he gets involved in politics because he is so for a fight by fascism and so for a fight this early by his visit to a concentration camp. this is in european history i understand this is kind of a -- that eisenhower saw a concentration camp. if you read his writings he's an extraordinarily intelligent man,

very measured writings. the letters he writes after he shattered. he comes to believe over time and this is no secret if you 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 and the 1950s to the 1940s and nuclear annihilation is, i'm sorry but that badly. not the even distribution of wealth, the ability of people to rise 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 together followers, together dispossessed followers either culturally or economically and he was concerned about the loss of

culture. culturally -- are dispossessed. he was an interventionist man because he wanted the world everywhere individuals in the world everywhere to feel that they were not dispossessed, not because he had a moral imperative to do it but because it made him feel like they were in trouble either culturally or economically. they were prime fodder for dictator. either fascist or communist or religious, he didn't like any of them to get a huge numbers of followers and 1 cent nuclear weapon they could literally destroy the world. this is a profound argument that i don't people -- think people have given him enough credit for. he wasn't just out there screwing around making a mess of vietnam are neither things to people complain about. he really did think that america had a crucial role to play in saving the world.

it was well thought out and very intelligent argument. >> host: you know we always think of the 60s and 70's as these very tumultuous decades filled with political and intellectual cultural ferment that one of the things that come across in your book that i have also thought about in the 50s were also well-timed where you start to have this contemporary liberalism and the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the 50s and prior to the civil rights act the founding of the national review and what becomes issue call it movement conservatism. i'm struck me describe some of william f. buckley's jr.'s writings as france and that they would be dismissed as fringe lunacy by gavin buckley died in 2008 he was lauded by both right and left. an example by the left of good conservatives. what is your interpretation of that change in perception?

>> guest: i would like to get to that but let me say in terms of the ferment of the 1950s one of the pieces that don't people make the connection between is that the 1950s look extraordinarily like the 1870s in both cases we are coming out of the germanic word against minorities and women who don't have rights in the nation and in both cases you get women's rights. you get african-american writes in native americans rights and you get a redefinition of american citizenship which i think is crucial in the 50s are not just about the candy cars. buckley of course was known when he wrote god men in jail. have you read it? >> host: i have. guess who it's not a great book. it's not well-written, it's not well argued and of course he learned and they are badly

edited and badly written. they are not well argued and they are not logical. he's going to get better as he gets older and we can forgive everybody for being young but one of the things that made him such a figure when he died this is quite gentile argument, his lead argument that he made in the 50s at least "god and man at yale" look quaint and respectable according to the politics at which point his yale education would virtually have him read out of the party. so i think the movement moves rather than him. >> host: i didn't go to yell but i believe george w. bush and of course cheney dropped out of yale. >> guest: president bush did not talk a lot about his yale education. talked a lot about his life on the ranch and that's not a reflection of him as much is

where the party went. >> host: ted cruz was princeton and harvard educated. he does come across as a good lawyer. let me talk to you about the reagan revolution. you make a fascinating argument again going to this idea of the west as a playground for all these different forces interact. >> guest: the west's playground, i like that. >> host: yeah and then you talk about how reagan and hoover conservatives played off of the idea of the cowboy and a self-starter. also launching a defense buildup that helps communities in the west. >> guest: straight out of reconstruction. so the west is fascinating. there are all sorts of things you can say and he can spend

your whole life studying it but it's worth noting that the american cowboy was anonymously short-lived but it lived, it lived during reconstruction. the cowboy stretches from 1836 to 1885 or 86 when a snowstorm wipes out the herds. that's 20 years and those are the 20 years of reconstruction so if you think about reconstruction in me think about 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 but u.s. one but everybody knows the american cowboy. everybody over the world does the american cowboy so why do we remember the american cowboy or this tumultuous period?

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 special interest in taxing america because republicans have been taxed during the civil war, taxing americans and poor black people. the west opens up because the american government had poured money into the west during the civil war and after the civil war with the railroad and the indian war and land surveys and damning and irrigation. they are pouring money out there but in the telling of a special in the southern newspapers and the planes newspapers what you get is a region that is run solely by individuals, by these hard-working cowboys who don't want anything to work there on way out. it's an image, it's an image that people like buffalo bill tapped into her popular entertainment. they played hugely and americans help but also in american cities but it's an image that catches

on. the cowboys, the western as an individual up against the government and that's a theme that resonates from jesse james who is a criminal who murdered people but becomes a symbol of an individual who stands against the government which is trying to kill him. a cowboy means an individual who is working his way up. that famous historical. cowboys were not -- it's an image in american society and the reason our olympic team -- for cowboy hats. >> host: have both parties played off of that image or is it a conservative/republican thing? i'm just curious. >> guest: the history of the west is not uniform so it's very important image in 1870s and 1880s and to some degree and

in the 1890s and of course in the spanish-american war, teddy roosevelt roughriders were named after the roughriders buffalo bill wild west. the early 20th century the western image states and during the depression nobody wants to be from the west. those are the okies on the arkies. they don't want to have anything to do with that. the western imagery takes a downturn in pops back up and takes off after brown v. boar board. in the 1960s when we get westerns all over the american cities in the 1970s when for example levi's go from being on james dean in his movies to everywhere. levi's takeoff in 1971 and that is where imagery pulls from the same theme that dominate america during construction. >> host: let me ask you at one point you talk about watergate and the right and i quote the paranoia inherent to conservatism. could you elaborate about that? in my paranoid because i was a

little bit shocked. i'm a paranoiac and i didn't even know it. >> guest: i think you are referring at that point i don't have the book memorized, i think you are referring to when nixon resigns? he refuses to accept any responsibility for anything he has done and what i was referring to there was his argument that he makes in that speech and his memoir that he was taken down by a liberal media. that whole concept of them liberal media as you know comes out of william f. buckley jr.'s mccarthy and his enemies. >> host: and that's a paranoid few. >> guest: nixon turned into paranoia and barkley is making and -- anyone at disagrees with him is a cobol. >> host: the paranoia attaches more to nixon than conservatism so i don't have to go to the

psychiatrist after this interview. we only have a few more minutes. one question i had at the end of your book was what does the lincolnian agenda look like today? we have seen some attempts by barack obama and joe biden administration and you mention very briefly but from my reading of the economic data they don't seem to have borne out in a widespread room yet. from your reading of history what is necessary to return if i were a republican politician having read your book and i called the professor up on the phone and i say want to return to the lincolnian vision, what do i duquette go would you tell him? >> guest: it's a formula and the formula is education, a government that is not the whole than two people at the bottom or the top of the spectrum and again it has to do more

rhetorically than with policy but rhetorically it's easy to do. it's a government that is not beholden to people at the top or bottom of the spectrum comment equality of opportunity and an emphasis on the middle class. it's something not unlike you have written about in the weekly standard. the problem is that it takes an outsider like lincoln teddy roosevelt or eisenhower to throw off the party apparatus and say we are going to do this the way we used to do it. if my e-mail is any indicator and of course the plural of anecdote is not data there are a lot of people who would like to see republican party do that. >> host: strikes me me as a taco education for example and republicans embrace school choice and charter school movement's and have waged campaigns against teachers unions. how does that fit into education reform or is that a lincolnian

tactic? >> guest: no it's not at all a lincolnian tactic. that's a much longer introduction but the idea that we should have widespread affordable good education including at the higher-level republicans who started our state universities unc notwithstanding a people point that out but the rest came from lincoln republicans is central to a democracy. and the cuts we have had in education since 1980 have been absolutely untrue to republican roots. >> host: as we speak today one of the major causes of so-called conservatism is destroying this thing called eximbank this institution that gives taxpayers loans to corporations like boeing. that seems to me like a