Welcome to the world of Heather Cox Richardson quotes, where the insightful words of this renowned historian and political commentator come to life. Heather Cox Richardson has long been a respected voice in American history and politics, known for her eloquent and thought-provoking commentary on contemporary issues. Her keen observations and articulate expressions have resonated with countless individuals seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the complex tapestry of American society and politics. In this collection, we have curated a selection of her most compelling quotes, providing you with a source of inspiration, reflection, and insight. Whether you’re looking to share her wisdom on social media, create visual content, or simply draw inspiration from her words, you’ll find a treasure trove of Heather Cox Richardson quotes below. Explore, engage, and enlighten, as her words continue to shape and challenge our perspectives on the world around us.
Men like Abraham Lincoln recognized that if the slaveholders were not stopped, it would only be a question of time until they spread their system of elite rule to the entire country. Poor men would be bound for life into menial labor, and American democracy would die. Heather Cox Richardson
I have always been a letter writer, and I found when my numbers got over half a million, I couldn’t think about how many people there were out there. I had to think as if I were writing a letter to my brothers and sisters, to my good friends with whom I have had a correspondence since I could hold a pen. Heather Cox Richardson
The history of the Republican Party is marked by vacillation between its founding principle of opportunity and its domination by the wealthy elite. Heather Cox Richardson
In short, Republicans under Trump have finally destroyed the New Deal, turning the government over to a small cadre of wealthy businessmen, unhampered, to run the country as they see fit. Heather Cox Richardson
In the 1820s, westerners and political outsiders worried that rich men in the east had commandeered the government for their own ends. Heather Cox Richardson
Few politicians did much to move the needle toward anything resembling gender equality, but it was President Nixon who first threw women under the political bus of Movement Conservatism. Heather Cox Richardson
In 1860, the Republicans put Lincoln in the White House, and Southerners left the Union. Their absence opened the way for the new party to reshape the national government, from protecting the wealth of propertied men to promoting economic opportunity for everyone. Heather Cox Richardson
Republicans who controlled the government in the 1920s insisted that national prosperity depended on government protection of the rich, who they believed would plow their capital back into the economy to provide jobs and higher wages for workers. Heather Cox Richardson
In the 1960s, Movement Conservatives created a cast of villains. The Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and President Eisenhower’s use of troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957 enabled Movement Conservatives to resurrect old white fears that government activism was simply a way to funnel white tax dollars to African-Americans. Heather Cox Richardson
Republican ideology says the government has no business supporting ordinary Americans: they should work to survive, even if that means they have to take the risk of contracting Covid-19. Heather Cox Richardson
Trump is a populist in the same mold as the nineteenth-century Populists who gave their name to American grassroots political movements. Historians and pundits argued themselves blue in the face over whether Populists were reactionary or progressive, but they were both. Heather Cox Richardson
Dog whistles about women who want handouts are simply an acceptable way to say that women are not worth as much as the men who must dominate the government. At the heart of Movement Conservatism is the conviction that America belongs to elite men alone. Heather Cox Richardson
The same Republicans who had threatened to impeach Hillary Clinton remained silent when, immediately after his surprise victory, Trump refused to abide by laws about emoluments or nepotism, openly profiting from the presidency and filling the White House with personal relatives. Heather Cox Richardson
The Treaty of Fort Laramie established most of what would later become South Dakota as a reservation, along with the Black Hills. But the treaty did not stop miners, buffalo hunters, railroad men, or settlers from intruding on Lakota lands. Heather Cox Richardson
During the Civil War, the fledgling Republican Party constructed the nation’s first activist government, using taxes to fund social welfare legislation for the first time in American history. Heather Cox Richardson
The Attorney General of the United States is, of course, not the president’s lawyer. The AG is supposed to be the attorney for the United States, protecting the rule of law. Heather Cox Richardson
Republicans turned against organized workers and abandoned the idea of promoting equality at the bottom of the economic scale. They turned their idea of economic harmony into a justification for supporting industrialists, who were the nation’s job creators. Heather Cox Richardson
Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Heather Cox Richardson
While the government underwrote the West more than any other region, the myth claimed that hardworking Western cowboys and settlers wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone to work out their own destiny. Heather Cox Richardson
The Teapot Dome scandal seemed to epitomize the administration of the president at the time, Warren G. Harding, although Harding himself was not implicated in that particular scandal. Heather Cox Richardson
Special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, provided ample evidence that the president should be investigated for obstruction of justice in his attempt to quell the Russia investigation by firing Comey and urging aides to lie. Heather Cox Richardson
The rise of a new kind of political science in the 1960s has been driving a wedge between political insiders and voters ever since. By turning voters into interest groups, it stopped establishment leaders from articulating a national narrative. It opened the way for Movement Conservatives to create today’s political crisis. Heather Cox Richardson
Voter suppression in Florida in 2000 helped put Republican George W Bush into office despite losing the popular vote and the targeting of state legislative elections in 2010 enabled Republicans to gerrymander states out of Democrat reach. Heather Cox Richardson
When a president, as Trump does, demonises opponents as an un-American mob trying to destroy the country, it is not a lunatic who tries to harm them, it is a patriot. Heather Cox Richardson
By 2015, the top 1 percent of families took home more than 20 percent of income. Wealth distribution was 10 times worse than that: the families in the top 1 percent owned as much as the families in the bottom 90 percent. Heather Cox Richardson
The interference of a foreign country in our elections is an assault on the government of the United States. Heather Cox Richardson
By the 1870s, ex-Confederates had taken their support for Western individualism a step further. They insisted the federal government was actively persecuting Western individuals. Heather Cox Richardson
Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, Movement Conservatives have tapped into the idea that an activist government redistributed wealth to lazy minorities. But they have also pushed hard on the idea that true Americans are Western individualists. Heather Cox Richardson
In psychology, trying to force others to accept the reality of a fake world is called gaslighting. It got its name from the 1944 film ‘Gaslight,’ in which a husband convinces his wife and their neighbors that she is insane. Heather Cox Richardson
Since the 1950s, Movement Conservatives have fought the fair examination of their ideas. They embrace a worldview in which a few wealthy men control the economy and dominate society. This idea repels most Americans. Heather Cox Richardson
The Trump administration is hammering again and again on the idea that Democrats will bring chaos and violence to American streets. Heather Cox Richardson
While crime is indeed up in some cities in the last month or so since the stay-at-home orders lifted, crime is nonetheless down overall for 2020. Indeed, violent crime has trended downward now for decades. Heather Cox Richardson
Under Ronald Reagan, hatred of the liberal media took on a storybook quality. Reagan had honed his political skills as a spokesman for General Electric. Heather Cox Richardson
In the individualist ideology, a man is responsible for his wife and children. This relegates women to domestic roles as wives and mothers protected by their menfolk, or silences them as special interest harpies demanding government benefits that will destroy individualist men. Heather Cox Richardson
If Congress allows the USPS to collapse and private companies take over the mail business, we can expect what we have seen with private internet providers: thorough service in urban areas that will turn a healthy profit, either none or very expensive service in rural areas. Heather Cox Richardson
We often get impeachment inquiries or moves for impeachment inquiries on one president or another, and it doesn’t go anywhere. Heather Cox Richardson
In the 1850s, as the numbers of Americans who were not invested in the slave system grew, the South’s leaders felt they had to entrench their power in the government or it was only a question of time until lawmakers would begin to regulate, or even outlaw, slavery. Heather Cox Richardson
Since Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the New Deal in the 1930s, radical conservatives have railed against the idea that the government should intervene in the economy. Heather Cox Richardson
Some dramatic event often crystallizes popular attention, and the world turns on a dime. Heather Cox Richardson
The Republican approach to handling the coronavirus and the economy is apparently not to turn to our government, but to put our heads down, go on as usual, and hope for a vaccine. Heather Cox Richardson
Trump’s administration looks a great deal like those of the 1850s and the 1890s, with business and government so intertwined that they cannot be disentangled. Heather Cox Richardson
Trump’s alliance with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in defiance of America’s own intelligence community, the Department of Justice, and the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, forces us to face that the fundamental principles of our nation are under attack. Heather Cox Richardson
Americans are right to wonder if, at long last, what George Washington called the Great Experiment has failed, and that our founders have lost their extraordinary wager that regular people could govern themselves better than a few rich men could. Heather Cox Richardson
Beginning in 1981, when government policies began to undermine the liberal consensus of the previous generation, wealth began to diverge. It is more unevenly distributed than ever before. Heather Cox Richardson
The government’s job, according to modern Republicans, is not the protection of equal opportunity for all Americans, but rather the protection of male breadwinners. Heather Cox Richardson
Producing 1,200 words every day, when you’re already working a full-time job is a lot. Heather Cox Richardson
The political construct that idealized cowboys fell into disrepute during and immediately after the New Deal. In those years, Americans turned away from Western individualism and toward the idea of an activist government. Heather Cox Richardson
When Ronald Reagan’s administration was exposed for having illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money covertly for the Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, Reagan acknowledged that the evidence was damning – yet defended the principle behind the scheme. Heather Cox Richardson
The only way to stop gaslighting is to shine the light of reality onto a situation. That makes it imperative for the perpetrator to keep victims in the dark. Heather Cox Richardson
Since 2012, the USPS has not been able to meet its prefunding requirement, but without it, the agency would have made a modest operating profit every year since 2013. Heather Cox Richardson
At the turn of the last century, extremists were forced back to the political fringes while younger politicians resurrected the vitality of the original Republican vision. They recognized that the nation could only develop and grow by protecting equality of opportunity for hardworking Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder. Heather Cox Richardson
In the mid 19th century, it had taken a generation of political rhetoric to induce southern soldiers to fight for the interests of a small ruling class in the name of democracy. Heather Cox Richardson
The roots of Nixon’s political descent lay at least as far back as May 1970, when the shooting of four young Americans at Kent State University began to turn the president’s moderate supporters against him. Heather Cox Richardson
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts slashes taxes on the very wealthy and kills regulations with the idea that rich businessmen will invest their money into the economy to support workers – the same idea that Republicans embraced in the 1920s. Heather Cox Richardson
The number of states in the union has been fixed at 50 for so long, few Americans realize that throughout most of our history, the addition of new states from time to time was a normal part of political life. Heather Cox Richardson
The fight is over two fundamentally different ideas about the nature of America. On one side are those who believe that that every hardworking person should be able to rise. On the other are those who believe that wealthy white men should always rule over a permanent class of workers. Heather Cox Richardson
Undermining the rule of law is an assault on the government of the United States. Heather Cox Richardson
Since the 1980s, Republicans have argued that policies embraced by a majority of Americans to promote equality of opportunity actually infringe liberty by hampering businessmen’s actions or taking their money through taxes. Heather Cox Richardson
Nixon clearly broke laws. He clearly believed he needed to stay in power to protect the country. But he recognized that he was breaking the law, and he tried to cover it up. Heather Cox Richardson
In the 1880s and 1890s, extremists in the Republican party also threatened the future of the US. Just when it seemed the extremists’ control of the government was complete, their political machinations, propaganda, and demonization of their opposition fueled a dramatic backlash. Heather Cox Richardson
The extremism of the Trump administration has galvanized women to push back against the political system that has disadvantaged them for a generation. Heather Cox Richardson
If Republican leaders are willing to enable Trump’s autocratic enthusiasms in return for oligarchy, American democracy will die. Heather Cox Richardson
Movement Conservatism was a fringe force from the 1950s until the 1980s, when voters elected Movement Conservative Ronald Reagan to the White House. But even then, their control of the Republican Party was not a given. Heather Cox Richardson
By 1929, 5 percent of the population received one-third of the nation’s income. The structural weaknesses of this economy plunged the nation into the Great Depression. Heather Cox Richardson
The fantasy world of Movement Conservatives is no longer fringe talk. The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination embrace it. They are playing to a chorus of true believers, and they are preaching what that choir wants to hear. They are following the same pattern Eric Hoffer identified as the path to authoritarianism. Heather Cox Richardson
The question of impeaching Donald Trump is about replacing the toxic partisanship of today’s Republican party with America’s traditional rule of law. It has become a constitutional imperative. Heather Cox Richardson
Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government. Heather Cox Richardson
The only thing that’s really hard for me is when I go to bed after everybody else in my house gets up. And that – you just feel stale. It just feels awful to be still finishing your day when everybody else is starting theirs. Heather Cox Richardson
Prodded by the needs of the Union cause, the Republican Party created a strong national government that educated young men and gave them land to farm. Ultimately, the GOP abolished slavery, then gave freedmen the vote so they could protect their own economic interests. Heather Cox Richardson
Since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office promising to scale back the federal government, Republican leaders have promised to cut regulation and taxes, and to return power to individuals to arrange their lives as they see fit. But they have never entirely managed to eradicate the New Deal government. Heather Cox Richardson
For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure. Heather Cox Richardson
Historians are prophets of the past, not of the future. Heather Cox Richardson
Today, the District of Columbia has more residents than at least two other states; Puerto Rico has more than 20. With numbers like that, admitting either or both to the union is less a political power play on the Democrats’ part than the late-19th-century partisan move that still warps American politics. Heather Cox Richardson
During the Civil War, the United States government had organized new territories in the West at a cracking pace, both to keep the Confederacy at bay and to bring the region’s mines and farmland under government control. Heather Cox Richardson
Elites want to cut taxes and stop government regulation of business. Evangelicals want to make America a Christian nation. And alt-right voters want to purge the rights of minorities and women. Heather Cox Richardson
Mt. Rushmore was conceived in 1923 in a desperate attempt to draw tourist dollars to a state that had been rushed into the Union to protect Republican political dominance and could not manage to achieve economic stability. Heather Cox Richardson
The idea that the country should be led by white men goes back to antebellum slaveholders, who argued that the world was naturally divided between working drudges and elite leaders, who directed their workers and used the wealth the workers produced to promote progress. Heather Cox Richardson
When the 1929 crash wiped out disposable income, there were not enough consumers to fuel a recovery. Heather Cox Richardson
Even after women got the vote in 1920, the idea that they stood for home and family helped to keep them from being seen as politically dangerous in the way that working men and male minorities were. Heather Cox Richardson
Roosevelt’s New Deal regulated business, protected social welfare and promoted national infrastructure on the principle that the role of government was not simply to protect the property of the wealthy, but rather was to promote equality of opportunity for all. Heather Cox Richardson
Republicans are a shrinking minority ruling an increasingly angry majority that not only wants to change the Republican policies that are moving wealth upward, but also threatens to hold Republican leaders accountable to the law. Heather Cox Richardson
Traditional Republicanism grew up in the 1850s as opposed to the Democrats, who always saw the world kind of as a ‘us vs. them’ proposition. That the world was limited; the economy was limited. Heather Cox Richardson
In fact, there is no law that says election results must come the same day as the election. Historically, they used to take days. Heather Cox Richardson
Republicans controlled the federal government for decades after the Civil War, and their policies funneled wealth upward — with dire consequences. In 1893, the economy crashed, and too few Americans had enough purchasing power to revive it. Lincoln had been right: Government that served the wealthy would ruin the country. Heather Cox Richardson
The Democratic political juggernaut that emerged from the Depression and the New Deal meant that Republicans had to scramble to figure out a way to recover their former dominance. Heather Cox Richardson
Since 1980, Republican shredding of the social safety net has disproportionately hit women, particularly women of colour. Heather Cox Richardson
One of the things historians do is we look for patterns. And in many ways, Donald Trump is a very easy read, because he operates in certain ways. And he is the king of distraction. Heather Cox Richardson
Only a few years after building a federal system that cleared the way for equal opportunity, Republicans faced a racist and xenophobic backlash against an active government – and they folded. By the 1880s, the party’s leaders had abandoned their message of opportunity and tied themselves to big business. Heather Cox Richardson
The USPS is self-funding; it does not receive support from tax dollars, and it is required to serve the entire country. Heather Cox Richardson
In 1884, for the first time since the Civil War, voters had elected a Democrat to the White House. Grover Cleveland promised to use the government to protect ordinary Americans, and to stop congressmen from catering to wealthy industrialists. Heather Cox Richardson
The Declaration of Independence promised citizens equal access to economic opportunity. This was the powerful principle for which men were willing to fight the American Revolution, but it was never codified in law. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they assumed that the country’s vast resources would ensure equality of opportunity. Heather Cox Richardson
The Middle Way included the largest public works project in American history: the Interstate Highway system, which updated American roads for a driving generation with leisure time on their hands, but expanded the federal government’s purview. Heather Cox Richardson
In contrast to them, Republicans argue, are minorities, organized workers, and women, who demand government policies that can only be paid for with tax dollars sucked from white men. Heather Cox Richardson
Trump brings rhetoric and reality together in a cartoon caricature of a Republican politician that anyone can understand. That gives him a vital role in history. He is the perfect exorcist to drive a stake through the heart of the modern Republican Party. Heather Cox Richardson
Since 2000, Republican policies have suppressed Democratic voting; since 2010, Republican gerrymandering has given the Republicans a heavy systematic advantage in Congress; and the last two Republican presidents have won the White House while losing the popular vote to their opponents. Heather Cox Richardson
New states were supposed to join the union when they reached a certain population, but in the late 19th century, population mattered a great deal less than partisanship. Heather Cox Richardson
Democracy was always a gamble. In 1776, the founders rejected the old idea that government should be based on hierarchies according to wealth or birth or religion. Heather Cox Richardson
To make sure Republicans stayed in power, they suppressed voting by people likely to vote Democratic, and gerrymandered states so that even if Democrats won a majority of votes, they would have a minority of representatives. Heather Cox Richardson
FDR’s New Deal and, after it, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s similar Middle Way, used the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure, like roads and bridges. Heather Cox Richardson
