1. United States
2. Letter

Please award Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) the Presidential Medal of Freedom. HCR is a political historian who uses facts and history to put the news in context. I read her “Letters from An American” every day as soon as they are posted on Substack or Facebook. I also normally read most of the news articles she cites they are based on. I have been so grateful for her framing of the current political news in our country’s historic perspective. She and her Letters have helped keep me sane and more balanced during this election season. HCR writes, “Historians are fond of saying that the past doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes. To understand the present, we have to understand how we got here. That’s where this newsletter comes in. I’m a professor of American history. This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American. These were the same questions a famous observer asked in a book of letters he published in 1782, the year before the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur called his book “Letters from an American Farmer. Like I say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.” HCR is educating this Grandmother, and many others, to become a more informed, historically grounded, citizen of the United States. She deserves this highest award our country has - The Presidential Medal of Freedom.