Letters from an American

An essential news source for me is Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History at Boston College. She is best known for her Letters, which are available at the Substack platform. Her Letters provide an essential context that helps me see current events in their broader historical context. It’s one person’s opinion (with extensive footnotes), but if I had to choose one person to provide a reliable context of current events, it would be Healther Cox Richardson. I’m sure she is my most quoted source.

Her Letters are written to a graduate student of history 200 years from now. Ponder that for a minute. She is intentionally writing a “first draft” of the history of our era.

Simply put, her historical anecdotes help me “connect the dots.” For example, she has helped me understand the immediate context of the MAGA movement as turning away from the FDR’s New Deal initiatives that lifted the US out of the Great Depression.

HCR has helped me see the longer context of the MAGA movement as moving the US back to the pre-Lincoln, pre-Civil War era, and the post-Reconstruction era of institutionalized white supremacy.

From HCR’s 7-minute explanation of the diverse anti-slavery coalition of the 1850s in “The Connecticut Forum,” with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and moderator Jonathan Capehart, October 24, 2024, via YouTube.

Havel to Snyder to Cheney

We’re in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, overlooking Lake Superior, reading Yale professor Timothy Snyder’s new book, On Freedom. As we prepare for our journey home on a clear, windy, blue sky day, On Freedom is a helpful, pre-election companion.

Snyder was influenced by Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident who became president. Snyder introduces his Yale students to Havel’s 1989 essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” a profound meditation on freedom. Snyder’s words about Havel help me understand today’s Republican Party in the US:

Havel (describes) Czechoslovakia … adaptation to the party line, even though no one believed it expressed anything beyond the convenience of the powerful. Normality in this sense … has no substance, only form. It is the habit of saying (and then thinking) what seems necessary, while agreeing implicitly (and then explicitly) that nothing really matters. Life becomes an echo chamber….

The pretending was what Havel called “unfreedom,” the concession of the authentic self. … Modern tyranny, Havel concluded, required not devotion but predictability.

In my 8th grade typing class, one of the drills was to type, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” I didn’t expect to live long enough to actually see it, but we’re in that time now. It’s time for Dems to work and vote for Kamala Harris for reasons readers of this blog understand. Republicans need to work and vote for Harris as well, not just for the well-being of our nation and world, but also for the long-term survival of the Republican Party.

Each step toward conformity with Donald Trump makes the Republican Party more predictable and less alive. Few Republican leaders have Liz Cheney’s courage. John McCain did. He understood freedom. He would be on the stage with Cheney and Kamala Harris. I believe the spirit of George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Abraham Lincoln is there, too. Those still alive must speak for themselves.

Photo by Cathey Leach of Lake Superior from the Summit Peak, Porcupine Mountains State Park, Michigan