American Values: Freedom from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

We frequently hear the term “values” discussed with regard to American politics, culture and life. But what are "American values?" All week, we’re delving into this question. Yesterday we discussed home ownership. Today we wrap up our series with a look at freedom. How did freedom come to be an American Value? If we value freedom so much, why have we spent so much of our nation’s history enslaving our own people, or oppressing those in other nations? And what does Freedom mean to Americans today? Joining us is Gene Clem, president of the Southwest Michigan Tea Party Patriots, who shares what freedom means to him, along with Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University, and author of “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln” and “American Slavery: The Story of American Freedom.”

Download the podcast here. Also by Foner: Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, The Story of American Freedom, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War With a New Introductory Essay, Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Second Seagull Edition, Volume 2. Many of the token African American Republicans, mistakenly point to Lincoln as their inspiration for joining the GOP. But here's the problem, Foner notes that the GOP "could not be more different. Lincoln in 1860 did not receive a single vote in most of the southern states. His Republican party was the party of opposition to the expansion of slavery and later of emancipation, and a strong federal government protecting the civil and political rights of black Americans. Today the party's center of gravity is in the South, it opposes most federal initiatives (except defense) and is the inheritor of Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" aimed almost exclusively at white voters." He said this in an interview on CNN; find that Q&A here.



The Washington Post had this to say about the Foner's book:

What gives the book its major spurt of energy and freshness is its account of the complicated political and social context in which Lincoln's views on slavery were formed and the large number of people and movements that helped create the dominant attitudes toward slavery in early and mid-19th-century America. The book "is intended to be both less and more than another biography," Foner claims in his preface. Actually, it's not a biography at all. It is different from a biography, and consequently neither "less" nor "more."

You can find that WP article here.