Best-selling author Rick Perlstein gave an analysis on right wings in the United States, explaining their ideals of what U.S. is and what causes problems within the country.

Perlstein, who wrote books titled “Before the Storm,” “Nixonland” and “The Invisible Bridge,” gave a presentation in the lecture hall in the Doudna Fine Arts Center Wednesday night.

Coming from all the way from Chicago, Perlstein went over the topics he wrote his books.

“Our subject today is the lies of the right-wing in American history,” he said.  History is both the subject of change and continuity, which is why in the last few years Perlstein found something frustrating.

Perlstein said the basic themes for all of his books centered on right-wing ideology and their history, along with the rise of the tea party in the first congressional election after Barrack Obama won his presidency in 2008.

Perlstein said his part of being a historian has been to establish that right-wing populism in the U.S. had stayed constant until the end of World War II.

He said the distinguishing the differences between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” is obvious.

“Good guys and bad guys, you can recognize them,” he said. “According to the right-wing slogan about gun control, the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said.

In the proposition that follows from that notion, that once the “bad guy’s” licenses have been taken away by any means is okay because civilization itself is at stake, he said.

“In the logic of certain kind of right-wing physiology, we know who the good guys are; we know who the bad guys are,” Perlstein said.

Perlstein said in the eyes of the right wing, the causes of the United States’ problems are alien to the country itself.

“They always come from the outside.  Liberals, socialist, Muslims and college professors,” he said.

Perlstein talked about a topic covered in “Nixonland.”

He said Nixon’s paranoia lead to his own downfall, and explained how Nixon became the man he was.

Stephanie White can be reached at 581-2812 or at sewhite2@eiu.edu.