RTA – Public Discourse + American History With Dr. Dani Holtz

“There is the ideal of a pristine moment in U.S. history when, surely, people were able to communicate without the kind of violent rhetoric you see today, but the truth is that’s never been the case.” — Danielle Holtz Today I interviewed Dr. Danielle Holtz. Danielle Holtz is the Postdoctoral Fellow at Oregon State University’s Center for the Humanities. As a historian of US political culture, intellectual history,and US foreign policy, Dr. Holtz focuses on conservatism and white supremacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is currently working on a book manuscript about racial nationalism and American politics based on her dissertation, “’Who Are the True Conservatives?’: A Critical History of American Conservatism in the Nineteenth Century.” She received her PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. She also served as the assistant editor for the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History, published in 2013. To catch up with our guest: Twitter: @daniholtz In this episode we speak about: Was American politics always a shit show? Was there ever a golden era of public discourse? You’ll hear the answers to that and more, including why critical thinking and the liberal arts are inherently dangerous to people who want to maintain the status quo. [EP108]