Berkeley Talks

In Berkeley Talks episode 221, American historian Heather Cox Richardson joins Dylan Penningroth, a UC Berkeley professor of law and history, in a conversation about the historical evolution of the Republican Party, and the state of U.S. politics and democracy today. Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, is the author of the popular nightly newsletter Letters from an American, in which she explains current political developments and relates them to historical events. With more than 3 million daily readers, Richardson says Letters has grown a “community around the world of people who are trying to reestablish a reality-based politics.”Topics in the conversation include: The origins of the Republican Party: President Lincoln had a vision of a government serving the common person, including equal access to resources like education and land. After the Civil War, Republicans under Lincoln created a national taxation system, which former Confederates argued was an unfair redistribution of