The United States is at a crossroads, with its two major political parties undergoing significant transformations. To better understand these changes and their implications for the country’s future, historian and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson recently sat down with UC Berkeley professor of law and history Dylan Penningroth for a timely and thought-provoking conversation.
As a professor of 19th-century American history at Boston College, Cox Richardson brings a unique perspective to the discussion of current politics. Her nightly newsletter, Letters from an American, has garnered a massive following of over three million readers, who turn to her for incisive analysis and insightful commentary.
Much of Cox Richardson’s work focuses on the history of the Republican Party, which she says has swung back and forth from a party for ordinary people to one for the rich and powerful three times since the 1850s.
She says, ironically, it was the Republican Party that created America’s national progressive income tax system in 1861—and just a decade later, the backlash began.
“The former Confederates, by 1871, start to argue that they didn’t object to Black rights on the basis of race… they cared about not having poor people voting. Because you’re taking these Black guys right out of the field and you’re letting them have the opportunity to decide how tax dollars are spent. And they’re putting in roads and they’re putting in schools and they’re putting in hospitals… and they’re paying with them with tax dollars and it’s us, the white guys who have property who are paying those things. So that’s a redistribution of wealth. You might even call it socialism.”
The result was the rise of the robber barons within the Republican Party.
Cox Richardson says the ideology of the Republican Party’s MAGA movement today is similar to that of the 1870s.
“They firmly believe that the government employees are wasteful and that their tax dollars are being taken by those people, and that wealth is being redistributed from them, the MAGA people, down to the undeserving.”
Hear all of Cox Richardson’s compelling analysis of the challenges facing our democracy. Watch Forging a New Political System, 2024 and Beyond.