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My ignorance of American history appalls me — and I thought I’d had a good education. Thank you, HCR, for educating this 75 year old graduate of one of the Seven Sisters colleges and a law school dropout to boot. I am much obliged and very grateful to you.

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I can't claim to clearly remember (at 71) everything I was taught in my youth. But I feel confident that the last part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century were glossed over. No exaggeration, I've learned more about those tumultuous periods in our country from the professor than I did in the classroom.

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I actually have a very good education in history, and just got a good history lesson tonight. Mostly the connections she made. I knew the events.

Tonight's history reminded me of two things:

1. Harry Truman was right in 1948 when he said "The only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies." As HCR demonstrated, they've been scum for 150 years. Not just the past 40.

2. Adlai Stevenson was right back in 1952, when he said: “The strange alchemy of time has somehow converted the Democrats into the truly conservative party of this country — the party dedicated to conserving all that is best, and building solidly and safely on these foundations.”

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Yea TC. My favorite HST quote “Socialism is the name they give almost anything that helps all the people.” Favorite Stevenson quote “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my republican friends, that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” Great men who knew republicans well. (However I did like Ike, but he should have been a Dem).

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All Republicans scum? Too strong, though it's true for today's version of the party except for a few precious exceptions. Love the Stevenson quote.

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You did read HCR's history lesson did you not? Truman was right back in 1948 that "the only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies." Look at every single thing HCR listed in that history lesson and tell me the people in the story are not scum. Scum who were willing to sell their mothers if it made them a dime. They were willing to bring on the Panic of 1893 to advance their political power, an act that is the exact same as what they have done every day since Obama took the oath of office. Just as one example.

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Of course I read it. Your comment about scum seemed to apply to all Republicans during that long period, or that's how I interpreted it. that's what I object to.

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Have to appreciate Adlai. To your point about HCR ... experience and learning do cause us to make the connections of events and antecedents 😌. Like that. Therein is the role of intelligence coming to fore.

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I went to high school in Arkansas and university in Texas. My American history classes pretty much ended at the Civil War (states rights!) with a smattering of Reconstruction and even smaller smattering beyond that.

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Sara, I hope you hung in there for most of the first year of law school for the history of contracts, torts & constitutional law. If not, a read of Marbury vs Madison is always well worth it. Our courts founded in the common law going back centuries say what the Law is.

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Bryan, I did! I also had criminal law and ethics. I guess lots of attorneys in the previous administration missed these. 😉

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For those of us, myself included, who don't know the case: "Summary: Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, was a U.S. Supreme Court case that established the precedent of judicial review. This judicial review power allows the Supreme Court to invalidate or declare unconstitutional actions or laws created by levels of government." https://sites.gsu.edu/us-constipedia/marbury-v-madison-1803/

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Thank you Judith.

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I didn't attend law school. But by far the best subject I studied as an undergraduate majoring in political science was political history of constitutional law. The two five-hour courses taught me so much and provided the context of much of what is happening today. Of course Marbury v. Madison was a focus. It's safe to assume that the present Supreme Court will honor that ruling as a precedent not to be ignored.

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Michael, my first introduction to Marbury vs. Maddson was as a UCLA undergrad in my Constitutional Law political science course. My professor spent an hour lecture on it. The case law was referenced throughout the class. The casec is foundational near the very beginning of SCOTUS.

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A main reason the classes have stayed with me all these decades later is, predictably, the professor — his ability to enliven the key cases and their significance, as well as his passion.

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Absolutely, like Professor Richardson.

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Howard Zinn's "A Peoples History of the United States" was not written until 1980.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States

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Reading that book back in the early '90's was the moment I knew why smatterings of the history I was taught in school seemed so biased compared to what my adopted grandmother would teach me when we would travel around the southwest visiting Indian reservations. I was stunned how they lived on such barren land and yet were such kind people to us. She grew up in New Mexico in a very small, humble canyon. Am thinking that her lovely, very wrinkled face looked quite Indian even though she had red hair and blue eyes. I now wonder if, like my biological father, she had Native ancestors but no one knew or talked about it, for shame. We spent many hours looking for pottery shards, arrowheads, geodes and squaw tears in the southwest and in the Hesperia desert where we stayed in her beloved vacation cabin, in nature, away from the world. She thought I had an "eagle eye" for scanning. Feels like I am still piecing "shards" together of my family history. It gets clearer and clearer as I age and "feel" the impact of the lying, controlling, white patriarchy on my family and country—on both sides. I thank her and my mother, in this moment, for instilling in me, the only female in my generation, to be alert, strong, respectful, question authority and fight for equality for all people. Witnessing the rise of fascism so blatantly in 2016. Violent Nazis in the open in Florida. I truly hope our laws will put a stop to all this tyranny and seditious uprising. Squaw tears...for us and the planet, otherwise.

(I am very aware that "squaw" is derogatory today, but that is part of history and the adjective of my little, obsidian, pile of tears).

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Ditto all of this from another elder Seven Sister.

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