Justin Webb

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Anthony Zurcher

Hello, it's Anthony and you're about to hear AmericasT and we're delighted to have you with us. And if you enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way you'll never miss an episode. Now on with today.

Justin Webb

It is 250 years since that pivotal year. That year that 13American colonies declared independence from Great Britain. 1776. The year that everything changed. Everything changed for them. For the actual people doing the signing. Everything changed of course on that continent, but also everything changed, you could argue, for the whole world. So here is the question, has it been a success? Has the American experiment succeeded or failed? Or is the jury out? Welcome to AmericasT.

Heather Cox Richardson

AmericasT, AmericasT from BBC News.

Justin Webb

You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that

Heather Cox Richardson

sound, it reminds me of money.

Justin Webb

We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.

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This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it.

Heather Cox Richardson

This. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.

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I have four words for you.

Heather Cox Richardson

Turn the volume up.

Justin Webb

Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmericasT in London, England.

Anthony Zurcher

And it's Anthony in the American headquarters of AmericasT here at the BBC bureau in Washington D.C. and we can get

Justin Webb

straight to our subject because listening to us and on the line is Heather Cox Richardson. Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College, used to teach at mit. She's published a load of books about American History. She's got a substack. She's been a very prolific person on substack for many years. She's got 3 million subscribers, which is going something. She's also got this 250 to 250 project. So this is a series of YouTube videos that look at specific moments, characters in the history of the U.S. so, Heather, thank you for talking to us. Welcome to AmericasT.

Heather Cox Richardson

It's a pleasure to be here.

Justin Webb

Can I start with a really simple question and a positive question? Cause I think we need to be positive, I want to be positive about America on its 250th birthday. And it's this. What is there to celebrate? What should be celebrated? What can be celebrated?

Heather Cox Richardson

Well, what can be celebrated today is what we have always celebrated, is the ability of individual people to determine their future and to determine the government under which they live. And for all the terrible things that are happening in the United States right now, now what you are seeing is a rebirth of that sense of agency and the desire to create a better nation.

Anthony Zurcher

There was something that Barack Obama, a quote he liked to always cite, and that was about the arc of history bending towards justice. And I think there are a lot of people on the left, when Obama was elected president, who felt that was true.

Justin Webb

Some of you who had been covering my campaigns know this is one of my favorite expressions was Dr. King's expression that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. We have to believe that ultimately justice will prevail.

Anthony Zurcher

Do you think now at the 250th anniversary with Donald Trump in office, that people on the left still feel that, or do you think that there's a disillusionment with the direction of the country?

Heather Cox Richardson

Well, a couple things. First of all, I'm really careful about the way we use the term the left here, because, of course, the left actually is an embrace of a kind of political economy that would destroy liberal democracy. And the United States of America really has never had a lot of people who are firmly in that camp. So what you're really talking about are those people who we used to refer to as the liberal consensus, those people who are trying to shore up American democracy. And what's interesting, I think, and I can't speak for other people, I'm speaking as an observer of what's happening in American politics. What is interesting in this moment are certainly the people who say, that's it. We're done. It's time to hang up our spurs. And the people who say, we're in a really hard moment. But we understand that we have the agency to change that moment. And one of the things that you are seeing is the rise of a reexamination of people like Barbara Jordan, who in 1974 was one of the people who really held the Republicans feet to the fire to impeach Richard Nixon. Or you're seeing the real celebration of those people who stepped forward in hard times in a way that we haven't for a long time. And part of that as well, I think, speaks to how many people are interested in history again in a way that they haven't been for a long time.

Justin Webb

I'm fascinated when you talk about the idea of those who are on the left being still supporters of the liberal project that is the United States, because one of the suggestions, and this was made some time ago by Richard Rorty, the wonderful philosopher, who I think is now dead, but he wrote this book called Achieving Our Country. The quote from James Baldwin. The idea was the Baldwin idea. Baldwin, of course, an African American, gay, in a time when that wasn't allowed either, or certainly wasn't socially acceptable, and at a time when Jim Crow still existed, still suggesting to Americans that the country was achievable. The things that were promised originally 250 years ago could be achieved by everyone in.

Anthony Zurcher

In it.

Justin Webb

And Richard Rorty's point being a decade or so ago, not sure that people on the left are fully signed up to the liberal project anymore. In other words, they don't believe anymore that the country is achievable. And when you hear the rhetoric of some on the progressive left, as they style themselves. Now he's got a point, hasn't he?

Heather Cox Richardson

Yes, but those people don't speak for a majority of the American people. And one of the reasons that I make that distinction between the left and the liberal consensus is because the American political project has swung so far to the right that one of the points I like to make in this moment is those people in the United States, for the most part. Now, of course, because of the way our primaries work and because of the fact we're in this moment of political transition, everybody on both sides occasionally tosses up somebody that I know professionally as wackadoodles. So, you know, we're going to put those out of the picture. But if you think about those people who are currently being called the progressive left or even Democratic socialists and calling themselves Democratic Socialists, their policies are actually to the right of the Republican Party in 1956. So this idea that somehow they are this Radical left, when in fact in the post World War II era they would not have even been really. I mean, I guess you could say they would have been mainstream Republicans, but they would have been on the right of the Republican party in the 1950s. So I just like to make that distinction because some of the things that they are calling for or standing behind are actually really quite centrist in terms of the sweep of American history.

Justin Webb

So just to drill down on that, what are the, you're talking about, I don't know, universal health care then, or attitudes to racial equality, Both of those things.

Heather Cox Richardson

Universal healthcare, of course, is proposed in the United States at first by Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s. We're not talking, this is something modern and crazy and you know, we could talk about the history of that, but certainly Dwight Eisenhower was the president who gave us a cabinet level health and Human services department. So that idea of universal healthcare. But even more than that, I'm always very interested in economics. Do you know what the top tax bracket was in the 1950s in America?

Justin Webb

I can't imagine.

Anthony Zurcher

90%.

Heather Cox Richardson

Yeah, 92. 92%.

Anthony Zurcher

There you go.

Heather Cox Richardson

But I'm not hearing anybody say we need to go to a tax policy where the upper tax income bracket bracket is 92%. So, you know, but also there are more things that the Republicans stood for in 56. The expansion of Social Security, the expansion of employment protections, the expansion of the social safety net, you know, more making it easier for women and disabled Americans to work for comparable wages for the same wages as men. I mean, there's, there's like all of these things that were in the 1956 Republican platform. The Democratic platform had even more suggestions, but the Republican platform that now are simply not on the table in the United States.

Anthony Zurcher

One of the things that we've seen over the last 20 years or so is these big swings back and forth between Republican administrations, Democratic Administrations, Republican Congresses, Democratic Congresses, and a kind of a sense by voters on both sides that the system isn't working. They're frustrated, they throw the bums out, they bring in new people, they get frustrated with them, they throw them out. Historic parallels over the past 250 years where there has been that kind of thing, where it seems like people are fed up with the whole system and neither party is doing enough to address their concerns.

Heather Cox Richardson

Yeah, we look a lot like the first Gilded Age in this moment, but there is a real difference between the first Gilded age in the 1880s, 1890s and 19 aughts and this moment. And the real difference there is that we are seeing the end game of a project to overturn the New Deal. The New Deal government that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ushered in the 1930s and then Republican presidents like Dwight Eisenhower expanded. And what that did, of course, is it made the modern American government much more active. And so since the beginning, actually since the beginning, but really taking off in 1937, there was a project to overturn that New Deal government to get rid of business regulation, to get rid of the basic social safety net it established, to stop government investment in infrastructure, to stop government protection of civil rights and make the United States walk away from the international rules based order.

Anthony Zurcher

Is this movement away from the power of Congress and to the presidency and kind of Congress becoming a dysfunctional body that isn't able to address people's concerns, doesn't really pass. Legislature is mired in gridlock. Is that part of what's contributing to American disaffection with their government now? Is it essentially Congress's fault to some extent?

Heather Cox Richardson

Is this a particularly ineffective Congress? Yes, this is historic. We have had at least one other Congress that was really not very. Didn't get very much done. It was under the Truman administration. But this one makes that one look superhuman compared to the fact that, you know, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, keeps sending everybody home because he can't even get the Republicans on board to do anything because he's got that far right rump that simply says no to everything. So we are in that moment where Congress is particularly ineffective. But I don't think it's the fault of Congress per se or the system per se so much as it is the abandonment by the Republican Party of this idea of checks and balances. And you can see that really dramatically in the Republicans in the Senate. What you see is them saying, we may not like this guy, but we're sure not going to let a Democrat get into office because they're going to regulate us and they're going to make us pay taxes. So that's really the surprise there is the refutation of the central tenets of American democracy because of this ideology that has taken over the Republican party since the 1990s, but really getting established in

Justin Webb

the 1980s, cards on the table. Heather. I really like America. I lived there for a decade. I have a child who's a US citizen. I felt, when I lived there, I felt nothing particular about it. And to be perfectly honest, I came to America initially not because I was particularly interested in it, but because I lived in Brussels and it Rained a lot and I wanted to go somewhere for the BBC that was a pleasanter place to live. But I developed such an affection for it because there is something away from the politics, it seems to me, something in the air, something in the water, America's can do spirit. That just does seem to me to differentiate you from pretty much anywhere else I've ever lived or visited.

Heather Cox Richardson

That's lovely to hear. I mean, as a historian I could refute that in any number of ways. I will say, I think that, you know, the American people, you know, with all our exceptions, are pretty decent people and are pretty decent to the people that they consider within their community. And therein lies both a brilliant achievement and a terrible weakness because of the ability to manipulate that to create a political enemy.

Anthony Zurcher

Me.

Heather Cox Richardson

But we could talk again about the great history of how Americans developed that idea. As you say, that can do spirit. But of course, Tocqueville put it in Democracy in America that that's the heart of America. I'm not entirely sure I buy it, but I'm glad you found it interesting

Justin Webb

that you don't entirely buy it because why in that case? So you're a skeptic on that. Why in that case? And I was asked this question the other day by someone and I wasn't fully able to answer or I gave a very weedy answer that you will be able to give a much better one or possib possibly you'll disagree with it completely. The question that I was asked is why has America been so successful? Why is it so mighty? Why is it so incredible as a force in the world? Whereas, I mean, they were making a distinction between America and Canada or Australia or other kind of English speaking places around the world, or indeed other nations. Actually, what is it about America that allowed it to dominate the last century and to a very great extent to dominate this century as well. What is the secret sauce?

Heather Cox Richardson

Well, so we have to start with resources, right? This continent has had extraordinary resources. And people who live in the United States of America have been excellent at exploiting those resources. I mean, that I think has to be the bottom line. But I do think that one of the key aspects of America and the people who live in the United States of America, and I keep making that distinction because I'm talking about a political identity versus the geographic space. Because of course indigenous Americans have been part of that polity or have not been part of that polity in different times. But there is inherent in the United States a really powerful and profound tension. And that is the Tension, on the one hand, between people who believe that some people are better than others and that the power of the government should be used to protect property, and those people who believe that everybody is created equal and the government should be used to make it possible for those people to be treated equally before the law, to have a say in their government and to have equal access to resources. And that tension which maps over gender, it maps over race, it obviously maps over class, has meant that America, and obviously, I can't speak for any other countries, I study America, but that has meant that the tensions that have made this country a terribly dark country, times, you know, our lynching, our massacres of indigenous Americans. I mean, you and I could make this list go on and on, is balanced by the opposite. Americans saying, you know, getting the upper hand when they want to promote equality and standing up for the right to vote, standing up for the expansion of rights. And to me, that's what the United States really is defined by that tension between these groups of people, those who have rights and those who want rights, and how they jockey to create a government. And that means that American democracy will never be finished. It also means that American democracy will never be perfect because, as I like to say, people are going to people, right? We have good people and we have bad people. But what that has done, I think, is it has opened up an avenue for new languages and new ideas and new music and new innovation, new ways of living together, new philosophies in that tension that perhaps are less possible in places that have less fundamental tensions in their society.

Anthony Zurcher

One of the things that we're celebrating now, and you hear a lot of, is celebrating America's founding and the Founding Fathers and how great America was from the get go. Was America's success from the start. Was it economically, was it politically a success from the start, or was it something that was built over time?

Heather Cox Richardson

I'm laughing because. No, of course not. It was not a success from the start, because think about it. I mean, what the founders did was crazy. In 1763, they were really, really proud. At the end of our French and Indian War, they were really proud to be members of the greatest empire in the modern era. They were really proud of their identity as Englishmen. That is something that they stood really strongly on. And by 1776, they're declaring independence, which is 13 years, right? And the founders talked about how the real revolution was in men's minds. And they used the word men there, of course, although it was also women's as well, was in minds before the Revolutionary War, which is going to come on the heels of that revolution after 1776. But the idea that they are writing a declaration of independence to the rest of the world, which is what it is, it's a letter to other countries in the world saying, hey, we're not rebels. There's actually a reason we're doing what we're doing and you should accept us as one of your own. And they write this declaration. And it starts with just this amazing declaration of natural law that, you know, we hold these truths to be self evident.

Declaration of Independence Reader

We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government.

Heather Cox Richardson

I mean, that's a mathematical formula. That's not, you know, you can't argue with that these are self evident that all men are created equal. Well, what's going on with that? And that they are entitled to certain unalienable rights, Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. What a thing to say in 1776. That is an Enlightenment declaration that the natural laws in the universe are discoverable and that it is possible, as the Declaration goes on to say, to construct a government that is based in those universal laws, so long as people have the right to make their own government. I mean, that is a crazy thing to say.

Justin Webb

Tell us about your own celebration of July 4th, then finally, Heather, what do you do? Because a lot of the concentration and the media concentration on the big events that are happening in D.C. and the Trump stuff and all the rest of it and the non trump stuff as well. But actually, it always struck me when I lived there that the real heart of the celebration of July 4th, even when it's not the 250th anniversary, was local.

Heather Cox Richardson

I think that's right. And it always has been. And that's exactly the case here. I live on the coast of Maine in a tourist area, so we get a ton of people. My entire extended family comes home for this weekend and you know, it's been basically a non stop celebration. You're out on the water and so on and having dinners with people and it's sort of our, our version, if you will, of Thanksgiving. But I will point out that I think this year is a little bit different than other years because we have such a fraught midterm election coming up in November. And one of the things I think that has created sort of a dam that is now breaking is we, many of us were expecting the federal government to do something for the fourth of July. And then when it's turned out that there really has not been the sort of national celebration because the money that Congress appropriated for local and state celebrations got subsumed by Trump's own Freedom250. So what you have seen sort of in the last three weeks is a lot of individuals stepping up to the plate. Well, like the 250 project we're doing, but stepping up to the plate to make their own celebrations. And it feels to me, and again, I'm a prophet of the past, not the future, that that is going to continue to roll forward into the rest of July and these celebrations of the Declaration, what it means to be an American. You know, I've seen a lot of people handing out constitutions and it is my suspicion that we will see that sort of who are we question and the celebrations of who we are going into what is absolutely going to be a fraught summer and then roll into the midterm. So I, you know, somebody said to me, well, I really wish I'd gotten on this because I think that the 4th of July is too soon for me to do anything and then it's

Asma Khalid

going to be over.

Heather Cox Richardson

Said that to me just in the next couple of days. And I said, I actually don't think it is going to be over. I think we're going to celebrate the holiday as we always do. But those themes are perhaps going to continue to rise, roll forward at least into November and with luck a little further.

Justin Webb

Heather COX Richardson, happy 4th of July and all the 4th of July's that come in the future too. Thanks so much for talking to us.

Heather Cox Richardson

Thank you for having me.

Justin Webb

If you've liked what you've heard today, please do consider subscribing.

Tristan Redman

When you hear the phrase Made in China, what do you think? I'm Tristan Redman.

Asma Khalid

And I'm Asma Khalid. And together we host the Global Global Story podcast from the BBC. And today on our show we look at the origins and evolution of Made in China because it actually wasn't inevitable.

Heather Cox Richardson

What we're talking about is the world's largest communist nation is at the beating heart of the capitalist system.

Tristan Redman

For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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How did a ballerina build one of the most controversial companies in finance.

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This week on Good Bad Billionaires. Luana Lopez Lara, the youngest self made female billionaire on the planet.

Good Bad Billionaires Narrator

Her company Kalshee lets you trade on anything from elections to the weather to war.

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Supporters say it predicts the future.

Good Bad Billionaires Narrator

Critics say it could undermine democracy. So is she a visionary or has

Luana Lopez Lara Advertiser

she turned the whole world into a casino?

Good Bad Billionaires Narrator

Good Bad Billionaire Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Justin Webb

To AmericasT. That way, of course, you'll never miss an episode and you can do this wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to get touch, we read every single message that we get. You can send us an email. Americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved as well in the AmericasT Discord server. The link to that is in the description. Until next time, bye.

Asma Khalid

The United States is about to mark its 280 and 50th anniversary.

Tristan Redman

And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe.

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We have this ability to export our

Justin Webb

story and a lot of people have bought it.

Heather Cox Richardson

I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well.

Asma Khalid

From the BBC, it's the United States at 2:50.

Heather Cox Richardson

Listen now.

Tristan Redman

Wherever you get your BBC podcasts,

Heather Cox Richardson

Is

Asma Khalid

the American Dream still possible? I'm Asma Khalid, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. One of the most successful exports the United States has ever sold the world is the American Dream that tantalizing promise of a better, freer, richer life. But is it still attainable?

Heather Cox Richardson

I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well.

Asma Khalid

For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Good Bad Billionaires Narrator

How did a ballerina build one of the most controversial companies in finance?

Luana Lopez Lara Advertiser

This week on Good Bad Billionaire, Luana Lopez Lara, the youngest self made female billionaire on the planet.

Good Bad Billionaires Narrator

Her company Kalshi lets you trade on anything from elections to the weather to war.

Luana Lopez Lara Advertiser

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Luana Lopez Lara Advertiser

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