Transcripts For CSPAN2 Author 20240705 : vimarsana.com

Time and. Thank you and welcome and good afternoon everyone im honored to introduce our next two speakers Heather Cox Richardson and Tracy K Smith, both writers of extraordinary talent and wisdom whose words and voices invited to reflect remain and revisit our and collective histories to make sense out of this time. A couple of years ago a good friend recommended Heather Cox Richardson newsletter letters from an american, which she now has in the millions. Im sure she some fans in this room too. Yes. I am grateful for heathers daily commentary because she to because what she does for me is she helps the firehose issues of the news her masterful she master translates the days events into segments pulls fact from fiction and grounds it all in the big picture of American History, while shining light where we need to be paying attention Heather Cox Richardson is the author of this book democracy awakening notes on the state of america. She is a professor of history, Boston College and an in 19th Century American, 19th Century America is specializing in politics and economics. Her previous books include, how the south won the civil oligarchy democracy and the continuing fight for the soul of america. She cohosts the podcast now and then with joanne freeman, and i just commented to her, just got her newsletter from america, an american at 430 this morning. So shes a busy woman. I remember being mesmerized by the words of Tracy K Smith when she served as the 22nd poet laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. During this time, tracy spearhead added american conversations celebrating poems in Rural Communities with the library of congress. She, the American Public media podcast the slowdown and edited the ever popular anthology 50 poems for our time. Tracy k smith is Pulitzer Prize winning poet memoirist, editor, translator and i brightest. She is a professor of english and african and African American studies at harvard university. Today she will be about her latest book to free the captives a plea for the soul of america. A plea for the american cell. Excuse me. I found this book a gorgeous and a reminder that the discomfort of the present time affects us all and that we can, in her words, choose to work alongside the generations that precede us intending to americas wounds. Please help in welcoming Tracy K Smith Heather Cox Richardson. Thank you for coming so excited that there and i get to have this conversation. Yes so thank you everyone for coming. Thank you for the Miami Book Fair for having us. Its been a great time. I dont know how anybody wants to sit in here. There are so many great books out there. But but because tracy was just very generous here. I get to have the first word and ill probably steal last. This is a book this is just phenomenal and i am so incredibly happy to be here to talk with dr. Smith about because everybody should go out and read it. Well, i feel like i want to say i am so excited and also deeply humbled and elated to be able to kind of feel like sit at your feet. A history is something that means so much to me i sometime times feel like i wish my mind were less slippery and that facts and dates would remain affixed where they belong. But i feel reading your work you. Make the movement of time and the recur of events and trends so useful. Even for someone like me and im so deeply for that. Well, so but this is a great place to start, i think, because you and i both do, and we are both explored the importance of stories to the individual, from the individual to the world. But were doing it in very different and and i found your book profoundly moving and and i got a quotation that i just have to to read and it has nothing to do with anything i want to talk about. But i just love this line. There is the lift of the plane, shocking gravity like. Dont you wish youd written that line . Because you can feel the plane ride. You can see the plane. And this is the sort of language that spoke to me. But but while were both dancing around issue of history and its meaning and the idea narrative and why it matters, im really interested that you to try to take it from the start of a memoir because i would no more write a memoir than i would pull my own teeth. And i thought that was because you come from a long history of course of people writing memoirs that changed society. So i wanted to know why you started with a memoir or started, but why . Why this book is a memoir . Yeah, thats a good question, because initial really i was adamant that i was not going to write another memoir. I wanted to try and think about citizenship and nationhood, but it felt impossible to approach conditions without entering through the body, without entering through my own life and the lives that i descend from and in in a way, surrendering to that me to move on. What felt like intimate terms with history, which is large, i call it, you know, like the the animal of history or even the beast of history. And so to be able to say maybe i can touch down on certain relevant regions of time through the of people that i know or claim and moving through my fathers and his i mean, his, his ancestors lives gave me a sense of proximity whereby i can imagine their and voices and bodies moving war moving through the circumstance of segregation in the jim crow south and it felt like a enterprise in a way it emboldened me to say i to experience and respond to and carry america and im willing i can become vulnerable and open up regions and complex within my own life to the same kind of questioning or scrutiny and. So it became a memoir well, so it definitely i thought i said this especially from the very beginning. I was hooked. But i have to ask as a writer, did you end up beginning that way or did you start writing that way . How did you start like physically this book . I ended up beginning that way. I started actually there were several lectures that id given and there were concepts that felt important, had to do with the american imagination, and another had to do with experience of time and grief and so those were starting points. And i think i was speaking from a detached place of like intellectual, especially in thinking about the terms of the american imagination, but in trying to bring that the larger format of a book. I felt myself like i felt language brittle ling a little bit. I a distance and an authority also cut myself off from other vocabularies and so almost a distraction or a means of procrastination. I said i want to find i want to look for my dad in the archive. I want to look for his and grandfather and and so i took this, this side path and finding them there, i almost felt like theres a moment in, the book, where i say, i almost feel like im a minor traveling through these tunnels. And then my my grandfather waves to me and says, here i am. But it felt like that. And every time i found evidence of these quiet in the archive, i felt claimed. And so this other vocabulary came in. I would love to ask you some questions. We were talking earlier about writing history and i really loved the values that youre aware of and that you impart to your students. Would you like to talk that by way of this particular and how it took shape or in terms of what you think readers need to be reached by history . Yeah, id be happy to talk about that. But but i just want to say one thing about finding your people in the archives that match is exactly what historians feel like. Our happy places in the archives, even if we dont have personal can. In fact, for me usually when usually when i dont have personal personal connections to whos in the archive because it feels like it feels magical it feels like theres this i always describe it as the holodeck you know you get to you to start filling in in star trek you get to fill the holodeck and the world starts to come alive around you. And there is an alchemy to that is. You know, one of the reasons we work as hard as we do at what seems sometimes to people to be obscure efforts to bring to light. You know the history of something that nobody else cares about its that its that i think and i love that that you have found it because stories that are waiting to be told are myriad. So when i wrote. Democracy awakening, i, i was intending simply to tell the story of a series of very short essays describing the questions, the answers to the questions that people ask me every day how did the parties switch sides . What is the southern strategy . But then i realized pretty quickly that the larger and i find this fascinating because its your larger question, too. But you came it from an individual forward and i came at it from the big story, i think, which is really powerful. But i quickly realized was that people always ask me how, did we get here . What does it mean to be in this place were in . And how do we get out . And so i wanted write a series of short essays, answer those questions. So i short essays that were divided into three sections, each one of which embodied a part of that narrative arc. And what were talking about before was it usually i write a book, i quite literally take a sheet of paper. Once i figured out its thinking about a book that takes a long time, not the writing. The writing is somewhat i wont say mechanic, but you got to know what you think. And that parts really hard. So if ever write another book. And by the way, i like your main hat back there. I already know its going to be, but i have already put four years of work into thinking about it, and i dont even have a book proposal at the best. In my best case scenario, ill have one in 2 to 3 more years. Thats the hard work. But i block out the book and i figure out what the narrative arc is and the narrative arc of this book was quite easy. Where are we . You know, how did we get here . Where are we and how do we get out . Then i chopped it up into the ten pieces in each section. You had to know to get there. And then within each one of those sections, the beats i was talking, i tried to make the essay completely stand alone, yet fit into a larger story. So took a lot of crafting. And then within that i tried demonstrate what i was doing by starting in the first section of how we got here with the main characters, i always write everybodys always acting in the books that i write. Theres no passive voice unless my editor threatens quit because i have never used passive for an entire essay. The first section is largely white male powerful actors, the middle section with the trump years is that arc, but underneath that, you start to see other voices up and the third section highlights the voices of marginalized americans. And that was really very deliberate. But thats very different than the way you go about working as a poet. I this may be very wrongheaded, but i feel like the act of writing is the means of discovery for me and so seldom do i do much mapping. I have to find a way to begin. And then as i move forward, i begin to feel questions arise. Memories in the periphery that announce themselves as relevant and i move through. I was saying that with this book sound is an operating a compositional mechanism for partly i believe because i was listening for voices theres a whole thread of this book that has to do with actually listening for voices with a meditative practice, which i believe myself to have entered into a kind of dialog with ancestors, others. And so part of the compositional method was to be aware of rhythms. Patterns of sound, internal that created forward momentum. So you explain to and i assume, everybody else is interested in this too. What does that look like . I mean, do you do you just carry a notebook with you during the day or do you sit and start to type and see what comes out . I make notes all the time, you know, trap flying somehow, like, is a good place to get ideas. But i, i, my sessions are long. I said ill spend an entire day if i can. Sitting and writing and and thinking and deleting and and so one way of thinking about it is in a poem. Oftentimes when i get to a place i dont know what to say next, i go back and i look at what ive said are images, concrete images that have been used that could be used further so that we are able to move in to what feels like tactile or concrete encounter with the terms of of place or person or memory that the poem has explored. Are there sorts, sounds, words that have been said, whose sound might give me a sense of what i might say next . And the i ask those questions is because im looking to deviate from my knowns and to move toward what might be under the surface, but present in useful and that process helps me move forward into this book toward imagining a past, toward finding language to. Describe things i havent described before in my own voice, like the experience of realizing that i had an alcohol problem and coming toward sobriety, or the experience of saying with full belief, im sitting here and im getting a message from someone else. And so part of these other help me find what to say or find a way to to anchor hard and, vulnerable making to the page. So did, you know, you were going to write this book about history when you started writing it it. I didnt know i was going to go to alabama. I thought i was going to be thinking in 2020, maybe some experiences that id had before the pandemic, traveling in the south and thinking about forms of ritual and community practice. But i didnt know. I didnt know i would leap off in terms of my my people in the way that i did. Do you want to describe for people the arc of the book or you or do you want me to now . Go ahead . I think the arc of book begins with claims, a sense of the not only the external and social circumstances that touched the lives of my ancestors, but the terms of i think of like improvisatory hope and and continue ins that bolstered their sense of self and community and thinking through those chapters i come up with the notion that in this country we are sorted into different categories where freedom and are entitlement to it is concerned. And so there are some who we have been taught to perceive free people who appear to descend from histories of power ownership and authority over others. And the myth that we are encouraged to accept is that this freedom is inherent. Its inseparable from ones very self. And it also means that the others of us who appear to descend from histories of colonization or enslavement, forced migration, are not free, and well never be free, but rather remain freed and as such. The ceiling of our aspiration, the things we might reasonably be allowed to demand or critique of the nation, the free that are limited and, that really made me want to think about how we hold these terms, which i believe, many of us disagree with in and in body. And so the book turns toward an examining portion of the american imagination. What it that holds us beholden to so many hierarchies and visible hierarchies, and what it is that encourages us to practice ipx8 and this notion or the mythology of ascent climbing up, which is inevitably a matter of finding leverage against others to inch our way upward or forward and. Then i guess the other concepts that the book is also trying to say like in the face of this are there other vocabularies or counter logics . Not only have sustained communities of the freed over centuries, but that might be useful to all of us wish to be no longer captive such a limiting diminishing system sobriety e is one other context that feels important as somebody who had a drinking problem and then, you know, quietly which became clear to me as my responsibility as a parent, i realized i was living in such a way to forget certain layers of that responsibility, to try and like, imagine i could move to the young version of myself who free, quote unquote, free or free or from responsibility and the responsibility for others and saying maybe we all, no matter what our relationship to substance is, maybe we are all in this country to be in an enterprise of forgetting and maybe claiming a civic sobriety which is what i think is another word for accountability, could be a vocabulary for for resisting ing the temptation to let go, go backward and not not question ourselves and others. So thats kind of the arc, i think the book ends with this an anecdote from when i was poet laureate. I was traveling in kentucky. I visited a small town called glasgow, and i read a number of poems of mine that derive from other kinds of Archival Research of black soldiers and families during the civil war. And i read this this poem in a space, in a which was mostly white and woman came up to me afterward and said, i really was so moved by the voices in that poem. And they reminded me of other voices, you know, from history that i know of. In fact, my grandmother who lived to be, you know, almost 100. We recorded her. And i want to go home and get this recording. You will you wait for me . So i waited and she eventually came and she appeared just stricken. And i said, what happened . And she said, well, believe me, my grandmother would never have wanted to hurt you. And suddenly i said, of course, of course, i understand these old kentucky stories, songs and mythologies would have cast a person like me and very hurtful light. But i have to say, i give that woman credit for going home having this realization. Maybe she listened to the recording again. Thats why she took so long. And coming back and saying, im accountable to this stranger. And not only that, but i somehow need to say that i learned something from my grandmother in that time. Maybe said its time for us to begin to remember different things. And so where i end up is were capable of we have to make choices about the mythologies that we cleave to and the lives that we might begin. Imagine as i dont want say worthy, because i dont like that word, but meaningful to us. Maybe thats a good way for me to ask you to talk a little bit about the that that you frame for us so clearly and one that feels so wonderful and useful and affirming. And to me was the shift between terms conservative and radical and how that has been used to sell different perspectives to us . Yes, id to do that. I just want to point out that the arc that you described, i think, is incredibly smart and very and its interesting to me that you described it in such scholarly terms when the book is i describe it to someone recently as a river. It is the story, a life, and it doubles back on itself and it turns around and you look at things from different perspectives and theyre all p people that you care. Theyre not ideas, although the ideas are obviously embedded in them so that its interesting that you described it in such scholarly terms when the book itself is about family and people and individuals and friends encounters and and just an interesting thing there. So i will also point out that we ended up in very similar places. Im killing myself because i took notes, something i wanted to read from you. And i took it from the electronic version and all the page numbers are wrong. So i might ask you, i read a passage in kind of and maybe its the same one. And if not, might ask you to find the other one. So, so one of the things that, that i think is a big link between what you i do is that were exploring stories and stories we tell and one about about history. But while youre taking personal histories and drawing larger conclusions about them. Im exploring the stories that people tell about the United States of america. And its just so interesting that we overlap in so many ways because the democracy awakening starts with the story, conservatism and what it means to be a conservative in america. And it starts with the premise that the stories we tell are or that people tell us are not necessarily true, that theyre the whole point of my book is that you can destroy a democracy telling by using words to tell something that is not true, to convince people to react, to false reality and to create a false history that makes them willing to support an authoritarian rather than to continue to support democracy and. I can talk more about that, but but it starts with the fact if you remain will know that i never use the word conserve ative to describe todays radical extreme in the Republican Party because theyre not conservatives. Theyre radical extremists. And they took that position quite deliberately in a way. And the book starts 1937 and the established meant of people who hated Franklin Delano roosevelts new deal as a political entity that would work to over to overturn that. And they they looked at the fact that the new created a new kind of government that regulated business and protected a basic social safety net and promoted infrastructure and protected civil rights. And they came out with they called a conservative manifest so in 1937 and it said that the the government had no role to play business because a man should be all men should be able to do with his business whatever wanted and accumulate as much wealth as could. And the government had no business in social social welfare because that belonged the churches and the government had no business developing infrastructure because would take tax dollars. And that too should be done by private enterprise. And it certainly had no role to play protecting rights in the states for they called in that document for something called home rule, which was the idea that states, especially southern states, could develop whatever kinds of civil rights legislation or not, that they wished it was a way to protect. And in American South and to some degree in the american west, which is also playing around with this manifest. So this is 1937. And the reason began with that is because doesnt sound familiar. And that story that that is conservative comes from that moment. This is group a very small group of people who trying to overturn a very popular and in order to get back to what came before that in the 1920s, the system that had landed us in the great depression, they claim, were conservative and to replace that or to reclaim true American History, turn to Abraham Lincoln and his use the word conservative, which is Just Brilliant and and i often fall back on it to describe, you know, what what american conservatism is in which the the word conservative from burkean conservatism, which developed in around the the french revolution. For a government that did not an ideology because edmund burke took one look at what was happening in france. And he said, you know, you cant govern ideology because pretty soon the ideal issue becomes more important than the people and you end up cutting the heads off people, trying to make them fit into your ideology. So a government really should promote stability and it should do so by promoting those that protect stability. In his mind. Like like and aristocracy and sort of the stabilizing features of society. Well, that really never came to america because there wasnt much to conserve when. They were busy trying to write their own new kind of government. So nobody uses that word very much in a political sense until 1850. And with the compromise of 1850, when a number of northerners said there aint no way were going to be returning people that enslaved was claimed to have enslaved because of course the the black americans who were being threatened with being driven to the south didnt have a say in a courtroom about whether or not they actually were enslaved all. An enslaver had to do was say yes that my property in order to get that to be returned to his control. A number of northerners said were free states. We are not returning people to the American South. And when that happened, elite enslavers started to call them radicals because. They werent following the law. And thats one of the pillars of stability, right . The law. So they said you are radicals and we are conserva tives. And the abolitionist looked at that and said, what are you talking about . This country was formed on the concept that all men are created equal. How can you say promoting enslavement is is a conservative thing to do . And crucially, Abraham Lincoln up that language very famously in speeches at the of the 1850s in which he says to elite enslavers how you say were the radicals because we dont want to human enslavement, because by then theyre talking about spreading it to the american, youre the radicals. Youre the ones who are trying to the declaration of independence a true conservative in the United States, is somebody who defends the declaration of independence and defends the idea that we are all created equal and we all have a right to a say in our government. And that that american conservatism is that in that moment. And also, i would argue in this moment i really like. So it was an attempt to say, heres a story that youre hearing again. And and again in the media. But the truth is that lincolns conservatism, which a number the radical extremists nowadays claim was something very and i always follow that up saying i am a lincoln conservative. You know, i believe in equality before the law and that everybody a right to a say in their government and that sort of turns that whole myth on its head so beautifully. I wanted to ask you, because freedom has long this nations rallying cry, what you think might productively replace that. So can we go to something you wrote. Okay so where ended up in this book in democracy awakening. So i wrote the book and then i put it aside for a number of months and i picked it back up. And you know, when i finished the first draft, it didnt sing. Do you find this like when writing sings, you can hear it, and if it doesnt sing, its not alive and you have that same experience. Oh, yeah yeah, theres that american imagination chapter. Had to get completely thrown away and started over because it would not sing because it wouldnt sing. And sometimes its something. Sometimes its not a big adjustment but you know, i went to the mat in a fight with my with my copy editors at the end of writing this book because, they wanted to change a word word. There was a line. It has donna such disservice and they wanted to say edison this and the word are would have completely ruined it and four times i had to go back and say no, i do not want the word in there because will not sing. And theyre like, yeah, whatever belongs. Im like, no, it doesnt. How style can . Yeah, yeah. But i actually went to a friend. I said, im right, arent i . And hes like, yes, you are. Im like, i love. But where i ended up was that the stories we tell in the United States right now, which are so incredibly important on the are that on the one hand you have people who back things like the 1776 project which i would which i argue is an authority and version of history that is the idea that our history sprang fully formed from George Washingtons head and we can get back to it if only we follow a series of timeless rules that are established either the bible or, by tradition. And the only thing thats keeping us from doing that are are those people who are insisting on laws that disagree that or in any you the opening up of society in ways that may not reflect those traditional rules that is a recipe for authoritarianism. The idea that all we got to do is clear the underbrush of the majority of us to get back to that pure society. And then on the other hand, we have people who look at the straw ordinary history of, marginalization of americans and the that have perpetuated inequality in a nation that professes to believe in equality. And they look at that and say this was always a sham democracy, never going to work. Where i ended up quite unexpectedly when i went back and read the manuscript a second time, was the story that jumped out to me was the story that you arrived at from an entirely different perspective, which was the American History is small d democratic history. Its the marginalized americans who have concerns, only held up before the nation. The declaration of independence, and said, if you believe in these principles, why am i not included in them and by making sure that that was always the centerpiece of our history they managed constantly to expand the idea of liberal democracy see and that struck me as as paralleling exactly your. I its not worth coming up with the number with the page here with you talk about in this in in two places in the in the electronic edition both that if you were a relationship with a man and also you have a much longer section its about a page long about exactly what im talking about and i would in the electronic version it was like on page 83, i can keep looking here then. So 83 doesnt know its the but you know what im talking about where you talk some of the marginalized people. You know what ive got the quotation here is this what you get when youre always working on electronics, right. Oh, i think i know what you i found the theory. I found 70, 77. Okay. Joining john to read it. Okay. Im going to im going to take a liberty of reading to. I think many black people found ourselves feeling a similar way, watching ourselves die, always a source of pain. Watching ourselves die while nation watched to at times surprised into outrage at times bemused and at times moved, not to apologize for but to defend the theft of our lives. Why should i need to explain that after the initial shock of this pain came a heightened awareness of our ongoing vulnerability, these neardaily reminders, the daily being the pace of debate around the worth of our lives daily being, the pace of violence against us fomented in some an age old resentment at something many of us had gotten good at believing was past the age of best use. But it was useful again. Suddenly it was almost consoling to remember that america was not and, had never been what were taught to believe it could be against our wishes we built this nation against, the laws of humanity, our bodies constituted its wealth. We defended it. We it. And here i am moved to quote the men credited for founding it. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. If i told you i a man who had treated the way our nation has treated race, you would tell me, go to leave to free black, to flee black in america are not fools for love. Dont you see, we are the leverage without which there is no such thing as freedom, no evidence that anyone is or, has ever been, or might one day dream of being free. And so. Okay, so, so of the things we dont have all that much time left before we take a few questions, one of the things that i people always ask me is, is how do we how do we get out how do we turn this ship around . How do we find a way out . And and and why do i have faith in moving forward and my to that in democracy awakens is i believe in the concept human freedom. I believe in the concept of human selfdetermination. And i do believe that americans will away from that. And one of the things that i do in the last third of the book is to describe the many ways in which since the very beginning, individual who have been excluded from the body have insisted on being included in it and within each one of those is form of i even say, resistance so much as expansion, although it is often again, it is often form of resistance to to gather together, to take over the public conversation, to draw attention to to to demonstrate peoples presentation of very qualities of citizenship that they are being accused of not having. You know, theres theres a whole list of those ten things, but at the end of the day, like i say all of the stories that i tell are about how ordinary individuals, took a look at the world around them and that that that that was not america that they wanted to say. And so i was just blown away by this section. Tracys where at the end of the day, as you know, if you listen to me, you know, im always saying take up oxygen, change the public conversation, contest every election, run for office, you know, push back against this of a fake world and insist on a Reality Based Community and, you know, honest to god, ive taken a long time to get to these positions. And ive worked really hard and ive read lots of books. Ive written lots of books, ive done that. And then i pick up to free the captives and im like, i could have been kayaking and eating m ms. So. So im wondering if tracy would read us that section. Okay. What . Save us. I have asked, resting my attention from the news, from the predictable contributions, even the donations. I feel to make from my professional, from my professed faith in the processes and institutions that seem, though i hope it isnt true, to creak and rattle in ways they never before used to. What will save us . I am often asking broad it out practically to it might be willing to console or else finally disillusion me. And so i ask it again prostrate in obedience to an orthodoxy. I never sought to possess until. Now, because what save us kneeling in this way . This is a scene of meditation head to earth my backyard in new jersey. I hear a voice by which i mean a thought fully plants itself in minds ear. It is not sonic, but rather and resolute distinct from the thoughts that emanate from me. On my knees with forehead to grass the voice, the foreign thought answers my question we will save us, but we will not do it alone. I think now we come to the part where get to be in real dialog you and and your question. So see there is at least one microphone. So if want to queue up in the middle behind the microphone, have a few minutes and then please keep in mind that the authors will be here signing. And you can have your question there too, because we have a hundred people in the room, a couple of hundred, you know what i mean . So go ahead, sir. All right. Thanks. Question per person. Okay. I think for the moment that i have in congress, have i first read your how the south won the civil war . Thats the best way introduction to your work. And then in the deep dive into your youtube all your content and so and i feel like you know you started history a kind of the idealism of you describe yourself as idealist in 1776 you know but america founded certainly before that with the british and the french colonization. And to me, the race issue is so primal. The to the u. S. All the discussions, even emmitt smith, i mean, the race thing is, is almost words being accepted. People accept these terms of white and black when theyre really made up. No one in here is white. People are different shades of, pink and red and olive, so on. And no one is black. People are brown. So do you ever think that people who are european descendants, who categorize themselves as white will ever give up that that term, which is so destructive, so just to be clear, when i describe myself as an idealist, i would like to say its a main expression. That doesnt mean hunt ducks with a rake like i meaning. Im up in the clouds. It means i believe ideas change society, right . And so, you know, most, most of my my work starts before the declaration of independence and it centers the world and the world in the that became the United States in the issue of race. So do i think people that that european descended americans will ever give concept up i guess you know historians profit our profits of the past not future. But i would say i say being logical, my to that is ideas malleable if in fact there was enough of a pressure to those ideas up in society they would and if theres not they will double down on them the way that certain people are now. Hi, my questions for Heather Cox Richardson then. My question is, what are your thoughts on the Electoral College and do you feel like its harming our democracy now. So Electoral College really quickly. This is why i hate Thomas Jefferson. One of the reasons i hate Thomas Jefferson. So the Electoral College was constructed initially for the to get over the problem that there was too much space the original 13 states so that somebody in couldnt know who was a good guy in massachusetts. So they decided what you would do was rather than vote for a president , you would vote for the honorable men in your town who would get together and they would decide who the good guys were to push forward and they would probably come up with more than one person. And then it would go to the house of representatives. So there was layer after layer after layer after layer in place. But Thomas Jefferson figured out in 1796, right when this thing is getting off the ground, that if he had gotten all the electoral votes from virginia, theyd kind of loaded the constitution so that virginia had way more electoral votes than anybody else. Theyre going to lose him as soon theres a good census. But early on thats where all the action is. One of the reasons we have so many early president s from. Virginia he realizes that if virginia had not split votes the way that everybody was doing at the time, he would have become president. So he convinces in 1800 to go ahead and deliver the electoral votes as a block winner, takes all. That was such a perversion of the initial that James Madison pitched a fit and said, we got a constitutional amendment thats going to fix this then and of course, that didnt happen. So now we only have maine and nebraska, as the two states have split their electoral votes. Then we also had the issue of in 1929 when the congress decided to cap the house of representative what it did. Is it badly shifted power away in the Electoral College elsewhere from the large states, texas, florida, new york and that further the Electoral College. So am i a fan of the Electoral College . Absolutely. Its a huge problem that being said. I think politically it would be very hard to change it now, but i do think we could make a case says, okay, were not going to get rid of it, but we could go back to the way it was intended to be. And if we actually it proportional again, it would force politicians, president , president ial candidates compete in every state and would certainly change the way that campaign and probably change our political system. Thank you. Thank you. Oh i wrote about that in the book. Hello. My name is roberta velez. Thank you very much for coming my question has to be with the recurring theme that im noticing about, the romanticization of american as a concept and looking towards the past, our founders, the constitution, declaration, independence. But when you look younger people, specifically young progressives, they have very negative views about the constitution, very literal them viewed themselves patriotic. And do you think that perhaps our romanticization of the founders, american democracy as a past concept that we need to go back and retrieve is maybe a false way to view it, but more thats a daily destination, daily choice that we have to achieve to ideals. And thats how we actually save american democracy by creating it for the 21st century. What a question you want to take us one. Well, ill try and then you can fix. When i hear your question. And thats the the framing, the, the glorification of founders. My goes back to all of those other small, quiet lives that. Also nothing bad or instrumental to the the life of the country. And so i would say why why we keep looking up to look toward history is really useful but to cast our gaze so into in such a small space is to to miss whole vocabulary trees of wisdom and hope that could be incredibly useful to us and inspiring perhaps to the people who feel. But let me add to that. I think the idea of a narrative that people can that they recognize the words of a song basically i came to this idea listening to some of those old great musicians that everybody still turns out to hear. And its not that they were cutting new ground or anything, but boy, its comforting to hear that same im not going to pick on anyone here but that same again and again and again. And thats one of the reasons im always whipping out lincoln, because everybody in this room knows who Abraham Lincoln is. You all different opinions about him, but its oh, i dont have to think about that. Its Abraham Lincoln. And to some degree, the idea of creating a national that everybody and that has touchstone sounds, it seems to me to be incredibly but the kicker is exactly. You just said it doesnt have to be washington, jefferson, madison. Absolutely. Could be. And i would say should be other voices as well. Thank you. How david want. My question is, how do you get rid of the distractions that the radical extremists put in front of everyone, such as transgender people, wanting to participate in sports, which is a problem that really doesnt exist and yet it takes up so much bandwidth. So you know how the the answer to you can look really closely at the last and when a group like red white and blue was doing in ohio where they literally trained people to go to School Board Meetings and say we are principles, parents are that our students should be exposed, our children should be exposed ideas and you know, using same language but countering it with a different narrative is embraced by what is, after all, the vast majority of americans. And thats one of the things im always telling people take up oxygen. You know, talk about the principle of this country as the the broad liberal principles in the government should defend the rights individuals to have access to things like ideas and and take the oxygen to change that story. Thank you. You think thank you so much. So im going to have to end the questions here because we need to switch over to our next speakers can. We have a big round of applause. You. Thank you so