pianogonzology: jon meacham

Showing posts with label jon meacham. Show all posts

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Old Days?. . .

. . . food for constitutionalist thought . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)

". . . Jefferson wrote Adams in 1816. Jefferson took the broadest of views: "I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy." . . . Adams was always less sanguine. "I dare not look beyond my nose into futurity," he wrote Jefferson. "Our money, our commerce, our religion, our national and state constitutions, even our arts and sciences, are so many seedpots of division, faction, sedition and rebellion. Everything is transmuted into an instrument of electioneering.". . . The past, he (Jefferson) thought, should hold no magical, unexamined claim over the present. "Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched," he wrote in 1816 . . . "They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present: and 40 years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading: and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions...but I know also that the laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind....We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.". . . "

What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html or at
http://www.ohomusic.com

Other Ray Jozwiak Offerings

(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)

Get your copy of OHO's Where Words Do Not Reach now!
Watch The Ocean City Ditty Video on YouTube
Also, be sure to visit: www.rayjozwiak.com and www.ohomusic.com

Follow me on Blogarama

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Evolved ?. . .

(from Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . If we can keep the vessel of state as steadily in her course for another four years, my earthly purposes will be accomplished.
-Thomas Jefferson

I think you ought to get a damn kicking, you red-headed son of a bitch. You are a pretty fellow to be President of the United States of America, you dirty scoundrel.
-Anonymous. . . "

. . . evidently not in politics . . .

Follow me on Blogarama

Friday, February 1, 2019

News. . .

. . . fake and otherwise . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them....Do not be too severe upon [the people's] errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind. . . "

Follow me on Blogarama