On her book Political Vocabularies: FDR, the Clergy Letters, and the Elements of Political Argument
Cover Interview of May 28, 2018
Lastly
Members of the clergy were both members of an elite and also
very closely connected with local communities. Some were relatively prosperous,
while others were struggling, so they had a unique set of perspectives on the
political changes and challenges associated with the New Deal. And those
perspectives add to our understanding of that important moment in time.
We live in different political worlds, constructed
through rhetoric. Our understandings of the kinds of authority that are
appropriate for a democracy differ. Our understandings of the kinds of people
who make good citizens and the hierarchies among those citizens differ.
How we justify our beliefs, and, as a result, which policies we prefer, differs.
This book, which examines those differences in the 1930s, helps us better understand
our own times. We can’t begin to solve the problems associated with political
polarization until we have understood its roots. I hope that this book
contributes to that endeavor.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
Lastly
Members of the clergy were both members of an elite and also very closely connected with local communities. Some were relatively prosperous, while others were struggling, so they had a unique set of perspectives on the political changes and challenges associated with the New Deal. And those perspectives add to our understanding of that important moment in time.
We live in different political worlds, constructed through rhetoric. Our understandings of the kinds of authority that are appropriate for a democracy differ. Our understandings of the kinds of people who make good citizens and the hierarchies among those citizens differ. How we justify our beliefs, and, as a result, which policies we prefer, differs. This book, which examines those differences in the 1930s, helps us better understand our own times. We can’t begin to solve the problems associated with political polarization until we have understood its roots. I hope that this book contributes to that endeavor.