Critical praise from the washington post, professor in history at Boston College explains the trajectory of conservatism in her book. The most important lyrical part. They underemphasized racism, sexism and inequality in other parts of the country during the civil war, she marshaled a wealth of evidence to support the books provocative title. Conservative cry foul but liberal readers will be persuaded by jeremiah. Im really excited to deacon but first, i want to invite those of you listening to share your questions to heather and do that by typing into the q a box i think you will see at the bottom of your screen, will take as many as we can in the second part will last about an hour. Its my great pleasure to introduce heather, professor of history at Boston College, author of six books about american politics and writer of the popular newsletter, letters from americans. Come, heather. Im trying to unmute myself. I want to think Stroke Society for doing this but also to say to people watching, im excited because this is the first time weve been able to do our own together. Ive asked her to open this way up beyond my book is not only to talk about her new book as well but also to talk about how the current moment and talk about whats going on in american Politics Today so we will talk about my book and i will talk about her book but also the first moment in the fact that we are limited to an hour is hard but thank you for giving it a shot. I am excited, too. This will be fun. Start with an obvious mention but probably one a lot of people are wondering about. If youve been a bit ive read about responses to your book, they use words like provocative, so i want to start by asking, how is it that you came to write this book what brought you to it given how timely it is . You never know whats going to be timely when you start writing one of the things i study i read politics all the time and i say how are people thinking about things . Later, where i came to end up on that but what happened was when i was in my last book from when i read conscience of a conservative, it was so similar to james henry speech from 1858 in which she talks about how government is run by a few good people and the government cant get involved in things because its unconstitutional for it was very similar. While i was writing that book, i was also teaching the trail of tears, 1830 movement during the pushing out of native americans out of the southeast sound in that particular week and for congressional conversations about why it was a good thing for the indians lutheran plan and be forced on the 50 march and why this happened why congress had to do this. It happened to be the same week some football player, i dont remember for some football player, video dragon is often out of an elevator by her hair. Hit me about those two things, the language was the exact same. The same excuse for this man dragging his girlfriend out of an elevator by her hair she wasnt listening to him, it was fourth grade, all those things. In congress about my the indians deserved to be pushed into oklahoma and this said to me that there was something about the day, now, that echoed other power struggles in the past and what i wanted to get was those power struggles in a moment today sounded much like the lead confederate in the 1850s . That reinforced my client i had to do how language creates power structures and societies that permit people to take power, when present, thats me speaks very much what you did, talking about the importance of emotions coming from the civil war to focus on earlier with emotion to how did you end up writing that book . You are right in a sense although the book is about physical violence in the u. S. Congress because of the impact but what was new it was going to be about congress, violence know how violence there was but the language people were throwing around the response we were just in the historical record. You could see how in the case of my book, they were strategically and deliberately using language to intimidate or silence or manipulate people who disagreed with him in light of work. It works really well. Thats because it relied on emotion. Intimidation often works. Fear or humiliation, if youre in congress performing before a national audience, you can manipulate that shape what someone is able to do so once the same lines of what youre talking about, i was interested in doing in my book was looking at the real dynamics of what was going on in congress and how that was shaping politics overall. You use this word again and again, bullying behavior. Client arguing is that the way bullying takes shape, not even initially, its the language. The way you say things, nowadays a lot about gas lighting but your shaping a worldview through language to establish dominance over somebody else, to bowling them. Its astonishing to me the parallels between the 1850s, not off the past because we dont always put the 1850s where we are now. I think about all the time. Even in the realm of bullying because bullying is about and the reason why it is particularly effective in politics is because you dont have to exert force, you have to be, its about the threat. If you are a bully, you are suggesting you could do ugly things if you want to joke but you dont have to. You just have to be sure that the person being bullied understands that and will respond to that. Its a brilliant way too many black people and when it works, it really works. Do me a favor now. [laughter] the threat that ill do it i need you to do meet favor thou though. Or i could do something to you. Or we could get along. Yes, as long as you do what i want you to do. As an example in your book, one of the things i think we share in this book is this fascination with language in the power of language and the ways in which we take it for granted but it is such a force of shaping politics, whats an instance in your book of a moment when it struck you language was having a shaping influence . Kind of everywhere if you think about it in one of the reasons people starting, its very hard to say this matters because you cant quantify, we all know, if somebody said i might earlier books, you never quantify how this talk was important that i sent understand that can you stand for right n now, this would happen that 80s or 90s, can you stand back and tell me Rush Limbaugh doesnt matter . Course he matters but we cant measure. Does that mean we shouldnt study it . The places jumping out at me in 1954, so much happened in 1954, right after mccarthy crashes and burns because people once and for all actually see him, its not just the language but they actually see him and rather than saying hes a crusader for anticommunism they say hes a bully we dont want any part of him. After that, junior and his brother, the book mccarthy and his enemy and in fact, they say mccarthy may have been a little rough but he was right. Capitalize because Movement Conservatism was not ever really traditional, it was a radical movement to undo and we see it play out right now. The the book and say we conservatives have to stand against what they call liberalism. They spent everybody else, all the democrats eisenhower republicans eisenhower volcanism terrific, interstate highways, g. I. Bill putting everybody into middleclass jobs, everybody does, didnt do nearly as much for people of color but a lot of people i grew up with what happened probably not even skilled workers because of the g. I. Bill were in the middle class. Engineers or printers or any number of things i could do which is not attainable for them during the depression. In this moment, they write this book and say we conservatives are against all of you, backspace up with everybody else. They do Something Interesting because thats the time for the first time capitalize liberal. People talk generally about we are all liberal. Literary says keep talking liberalism because everybody is a liberal and i meant it in the general we believe the government has a role to play regularly assist in providing safety net in providing infrastructure, we all agree, replicants democrats have different ideas about which parts are more important. Everybody thought of themselves as liberal. I capitalize it and say these guys are essentially at the communist party in china. There party, they are taking over america impact powerful construction at the time, the book itself people were like really, mccarthy . It gets a lot of attention but by now, the idea of being a liberal member 80s people started to collect the eloquent, remember that . Dont call them the outward and is now this and you could see that being constructed. I was one moment in the other moment was in the 1990s, a pact literally, they were in charge of indoctrinating, work like that. They were the coaches for the new republicans to kind of socialize them into the rePublican Party. They actually circulate a document all the words they should use when they talk about democrats. Those are words like trader and lazy and special interest and angry in all these negative words and then they have a list of words to talk about republicans and republican policies and they were patriots, fiscally responsible, family, happy, office stuff. See the Publican Party month moment in which they right of the party real working conditions that they label that even though its really the other round. Very powerful thing which. You could literally seek them using language to divide the country and label half of it as negative and half as positive. So those with her to touchstones for me. Im trying to remember, you talked about a similar touchstone, daniel . Certainly. Talk about this, too. In the scenario you just described with language is people creating new way. Capitalizing those words to suggest there is in it. Conservatism in the present not just words that are capitalized, they are fixed. The power about his in a way, whoever is leading doesnt even necessarily have an awareness of the power just by looking at it. That could back to the power of leverage and politics because if youre effective at that scope, then your basically not just creating us and them to pull people into functions and emotions that will play well because words are like a direct real that can be. Right into emotions responses, right into things youre not necessarily going to profit so one example in my first book,. I left it, by the way. Fears of honor. Thank you. Its interesting, doctors and vulnerabilities democracy is how important languages because democracy is about aggression power which is about persuasion. By definition, its flexible and vulnerable and i can be good and pat the beginning, they are playing these games with words and even in the first years of government, theres a federalist it in the 90s, it is in a sense more elitist and big money driven discomfited by democracy and theres a lot of talks about if you go out and give a speech and public and anyone uses the word arrester cap, you are done. Aristocrat. Theres a whole thing from that one word that can be used earlier. Something like that word can have in which it shapes power and politics. In the 21st century, another great moment where people were not concerned about taxes by the 80s but if you talked about taxes, it conjured up this idea that somehow taxes of hardworking white people going into the pockets of lazy people of color and feminists. We even have a conversation by one of the political operatives who talks about it and he says 1968, you can use racial epithets even though he uses it in quotation, you cant really say go out and vote for me or you will have to deal with this, he said generalize it, Start Talking about it. If you talk about that, people knew what youre talking about. You could take one more step back and you talk about taxes and people are like oh yeah, i care about taxes and when you talk about taxes, studying congress, it is not carrying the baggage of the long history of American Fear underclass register bidding wealth but the reality is by 1980, when americans hear from looking politicians but they will never raise taxes and democrats want to take money from the makers and give us the takers, is absolutely racial language so all you have to do it even now, all you have to do to make sure we dont have social buffer legislation is to say, you want your texas race . There you are. 150 years of American History is right on the table with that three letter word. Deploying it to a certain kind of politics. We see it all the time now, someone will Say Something and you will see on social media, see dont wiggle. Others will say no, its not. They are referring to x, y, and z. They are meant to have a coded message but theres an argument about that so the power affect is also a depression because you can take i dont know what i meant. I remember when people started using the okay symbol as a white power symbol. Member reading, ive been doing that my whole life. By the time you see on these places, like youre right, that is. Its a period up ambiguity where if you said was a white power symbol, especially all the people you people are social justice bars it was away to deploy that simple ways that it was double powerful, not only for you calling people through cute but anybody who called you out on it saying no, youre being paranoid its one of the ways work. Thats why we talk about gas lighting. Thats how gas lighting port. Just as you are saying the weird ambiguity, in the early. Heparin is more, some people, you declare your loyalty to them. Just by asking the question, if a question but it buys into the us and them creation thats shaping politics. I was working on my book, people at the time understood the kind of power in the late 1850s from moving up to the civil war, i found a lot of members of congress, even outside of congress saying to each other we have to control our words. Which is striking to hear if you talk about the crisis and worried if the union will collapse embarrassing watch your words from the testimony of power and the emotions i can hop on the high level and popular level as well, 17. Who referred to words as missiles. He says dont send them out us. You will have bloodshed. Hold off on the missiles. I think the power is, its so easy to not acknowledge it. The 19th century, they started rhetoric. People like Joshua Chamberlain from 20s, frederick. They studied how to use words to mobilize populations and we kind of affect go in the 20th century and i got the back of these shelves, a whole series of books, the history from the 19th century the fact that we have permitted that to be the study but also be deployed by people who are acting in a way that most americans are not aware problematic. I saw today is a new at out from the trunk campaign thats really misleading, it does all kinds of stuff that is not historically accurate and it makes people sound like they are saying things they are not saying. A great example from a book you and i know were somebody used a quotation and it was entirely accurate except he took up the word not. Its true except that little word not which kind of matters but its one of the things that i focus on is the difference between image and reality and how people can tell if somebody is being manipulative. One of my things is once you get this us versus them from my work is based on erics offering who wrote this book called true believers he was interested in how you take a body of people, everybody worried about the rise of hitler and he said who cares . Every generation has them. What you care about certain arrows there was there how they go in a certain time . Done, which was absolutely turnpike language, thank you have to kind of weapon i sent. I went from that and came up with 1850s, these four stages of how you go from its in my interest to pray for us and them to how it turns into societal spew of yeah, its better than the others vision, society and office in this them, while they probably shouldnt out and went they cant vote, they shouldnt have any power and pretty soon, if the people plus defined as the others are still trying to have a society, killing its a stage process the question of how do you know when you are being manipulated . How do you stop the process . I think it directly to this moment by wonder i know if you have ideas and i think thats probably an important place to go. How do people know they are thinks manipulated . Thats a good question. Its probably the most consistent question my students asked me when we are studying political history. Most looking at the late 18th an early 19th century. They are supposedly great men who say reliable things but inevitably, if they talk about politics imports from students get to where they get confused and they basically say outright cutaway these people know what they are saying and when are they just having an impact . Judge when they are being politician or being sincere . The fact that you have to ask that tells you a lot about politics. So to speak. My answer always has to do with being aware of details surrounding context, not letting yourself responding in a way you are expected to respond. If youre able to step back and about this, would they think they are speaking to . Come to they want or not want . Summit details which in a sense is what i teach is a history teaching history, evidence speaking about evidence, what is what it means and what the circumstances are that might shape the meaning. Cant say i sit here hear someone Say Something sometimes you can tell and sometimes you cant but you have to think about for assuming something and particularly now when Technology Technology always shapes democracy and unpredictable ways and one of the things is making it even harder than normal to decide what facts are. We need to sit back consider, sometimes its hard to know what the circumstances are. Its confusing. Confusion is truth and reality is ultimately part of what creates a particular kind of moment in politics. I tell my students, certainly we always do the who, what, why and when and where and i talk about two things. One, step back for a second. Do you really think your neighbors are keeping babies in the basement . Back for a second, do you really think this would have happened . Much of what we hear this was in the 50s, so much of what you hear your like oh my god, theyre going to. The music really . I know a lot of these people like that. A lot of people in my life and to my knowledge, none of them ever people with barrels in the basement, that is not normal behavior. The other thing i always talk about, and it funny telling you because of this pandemic, i am sitting on property that belonged to a woman that told me, she is long gone, would see she lied about her age. When i was young, i cared about Healthy People think about stuff that come to this house and i would say republicans beli