mocking way to characterize their debates. the people in the house that ,here was such a thing as truth and that if you could corral and it corral enough experts and get the facts, you could arrive at the truth. brian: you said a couple of things, a salon and dupont circle. what is a salon? mr. snyder: it was a political gathering place. automobiles, no television, little bit of radio. people entertain themselves by having dinner parties. in 1912, some disgruntled members of the cast administration began inviting very prominent and not so prominent people over for dinner to discuss political ideas of the day. their main political idea was they thought that taft was a horrible president, and the way to save the country was to bring theodore roosevelt back to the white house. brian: why theodore roosevelt? mr. snyder: part of it was a cold personality, but also roosevelt saw the wisdom of their ideas about labor and minimum wage laws, the rights of labor unions. that was the
mocking way to characterize their debates. the people in the house that there was such a thing as truth, and that if you could corral and it corral enough experts and get the facts, you could arrive at the truth. brian: you said a couple of things, a salon and dupont circle. what is a salon? mr. snyder: it was a political gathering place. not a lot of automobiles, no television, little bit of radio. people entertain themselves by having dinner parties. in 1912, some disgruntled members of the cast administration began inviting very prominent and not so prominent people over for dinner to discuss political ideas of the day. their main political idea was they thought that taft was a horrible president, and the way to save the country was to bring theodore roosevelt back to the white house. brian: why theodore roosevelt? mr. snyder: part of it was a cold personality, but also roosevelt saw the wisdom of their ideas about labor and minimum wage laws, the rights of labor unions.
watch the communicators tonight at eight eastern on c-span two. announcer: this week on q&a, law professor and author brad snyder discusses his book the house of truth, a washington political salon and the foundations of american liberalism. brian: brad snyder, your book is called the house of truth. where did you get the title? mr. snyder: the title is what the people who lived there called the house in a self mocking way to characterize their debates. the people in the house that there was such a thing as truth, and that if you could corral and it corral enough experts and get the facts, you could arrive at the truth. this was part of their spell socko debate. their philosophical debate. brian: you said a couple of things, a salon and dupont circle. what is a salon? mr. snyder: it was a political gathering place. not a lot of automobiles, no television, little bit of radio. people entertain themselves by having dinner parties. in 1912, some disgruntled members
from a relatively obscure stice in 1912 into a liberal icon that homes leaves the court. host heast you say robert valentine was one of the most important people to get you the material you needed? robert valentine has been lost to history and past commissioner of indian affairs. and in 1911, he was living in the house of truth which was on 19th street with his wife and infant daughter and his wife and daughter went home to new england to nurse the daughter ack to help. this is how the salon took shape. the reason why valentine is two-fold. he was the house s visionary. he sort of set the agenda of the house and secondly, as you alluded his correspondence was incredibly important because valentine s writing on a daily basis about the comings and goings. and a remarkable woman who i thank in my acknowledgements was friend of valentine s daughter and granddaughter. and his papers were in a barn in rescueduntil this woman them, preserved them and donated them to the mas
that all happens tonight on book tv. [inaudible conversations] hello, everyone, thank you so much for coming out this afternoon. my name is davis shoulders, it s our honor to just on behalf of staff it s honor to welcome you here for this event for the brad snyder, foundations of american liberalism. i have a few housekeeping notes i want to cover right before we get started. if you will take this time to silence any cell phones or noise-making devises, we don t have any unnecessary interruptions during the event. i will also mention that if you re a regular here, sometimes you know that we ask you to put up the chairs, we are going to have an event following this one, so after the event is over leave the chairs as we are. we are honored to have c-span book tv, comes out to many of our events. this is being recorded but as a part of that, we really like to have whenever you ask a question because there s going to be at the second half of the reading there s going to be time