Welcome to We can do hard things. Today, we are doing a very hard thing and a very timely thing and a very important thing in this American moment, which is we are taking back patriotism.

Patriotism as a concept from the people who have lost their privileges to call themselves

patriots. They have lost their privileges. Okay? We are the fucking patriots now. And we are going to

tell you why. Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College

and an expert on American political and economic history. She is the author of seven books,

including the award-winning How the South Won the Civil War and her latest, the New York Times bestseller Democracy Awakening.

Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Guardian,

among other outlets. Her widely read newsletter, which Pod Squad, if you don't know about letters

from an American, please know that tons of us every single morning are reading Heather Cox Richardson's

letter that she writes every single morning about the state of our

country, how to understand it, and what the hell we should do next. You should just register for that thing.

And you can also listen to it. If you don't want to read it, you can listen to it, which is what I do

on podcasts. We'll link to all this. She reads the letter each day.

Listen to this episode in which we ask Heather Cox Richardson,

the democracy defender, Heather Cox Richardson,

that millions of people are listening to every morning

to understand what the hell is going on in this country

and what to do about it, where we ask her the question I've

been wanting to ask someone for a very long time, which is this. And I don't mean to put too

find a point on it or to be too nuanced so that we don't understand. But my question is,

what in the most strenuous terms. The fuck.

What the fuck?

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