‘Democracy Awakening’ with Heather Cox Richardson
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2024
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Heather Cox Richardson is the author of the book “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” which looks at the evolution of American democracy and traces the roots of Donald Trump’s “authoritarian experiment” to the earliest days of the republic. Lawfare’s Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey sat down with Richardson to discuss the state of American democracy today, the historical context we should use to understand the current threats to democracy, and what we can learn from previous periods of American history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the Lawfair Podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of Lawfair at Patreon.com slash Lawfair. That's Patreon.com |
| 0:16.4 | slash Lawfair. Also check out Lawfair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, lawfare no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:30.0 | One of the reasons we're in a unique place today is that I'm not the only person who can look at the weak spots in American democracy and say, oh look, we've got a problem problem and it's a problem that can be |
| 0:44.9 | exploited by people who are trying to destroy our country and we can see this |
| 0:48.9 | right now in the lead up to the 2024 election the amount of |
| 0:51.7 | disinformation that's coming from bad actors people like |
| 0:54.8 | Russia in the case of the article that I'm mentioning or Iran or China people who are |
| 1:00.0 | deliberately trying to tear apart an American population that every poll will show you |
| 1:04.8 | is actually highly united on most of the issues that we consider hot button issues. |
| 1:10.1 | So for example, there was a recent poll, very recent poll about whether or not Americans |
| 1:15.2 | support reproductive rights and 69% of Americans want to see gun laws. |
| 1:23.0 | That's not a controversial idea. |
| 1:25.0 | Similarly, huge numbers of Americans over 70% want common sense gun laws. |
| 1:30.6 | You know, the things that are presented to us as highly divisive are in fact not |
| 1:35.8 | highly divisive. They're being exploited by people who are trying to convince |
| 1:40.3 | us that we are not a United people and that our country is in real trouble. |
| 1:46.2 | I'm Anna Hickey, Associate Editor of Communications for Law Fair, and this is the Law Fair |
| 1:51.0 | podcast January 25, 2024. |
| 1:55.4 | Heather Cox Richardson is the author of the book Democracy Awakening, |
| 1:59.5 | Notes on the State of America, which |
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