Those were the issues back in Tom's day, along with keeping slaves and bedding down a few of them. But then, nobody's perfect.

Jefferson, and the rest of our founding fathers, were indeed very intelligent men.

Michael D.

Fine statements from a very liberal president who made sure that he wrote in the Constitution the phrase, "alter or abolish it."

As one who has benefited from the prosperity and rapid growth with strong unions, company pensions, and longtime employment, you failed to realize the shift in the economic status of Americans as a result of defunding and dismantling government in favor of "privatizing" everything.

For example, the arts. Artists, philosophers, poets, and writers of songs, plays and literature have long been sponsored by aristocrats and rich people. Pursuit of these fields and the teaching of them honored in our institutions of higher learning.

In the last 50 years or so value in education as shifted to monetary focus, banking, accounting, and those professions of a technical nature that are moneymaking: medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, law and those with no educational value at all, sports (coaches are the highest paid teachers in all education).

In your day, graduating from high school meant a good job that would support a family. Today, graduating from high school gives you a service job paying below poverty without enough money to go on to school.

The problem is not the government where there are still good jobs and benefits and pensions. The problem is the shift in value of the American people. Abandoning the arts and humanities… Those things that make us human, and focusing on making money as a end-all and sign of importance.

Supporting the arts like the New Deal did would put money in creative, inventive people's pockets. Government sponsorship would greatly reduce the unemployment and underemployment caused by political favoritism, salary inflation for executives, and other vices promulgated by those in power in the government, and not the government, itself.

Ron

Yes, too much debt, too much government, too much politicians staying in office for decades.
Too too much and we have about had enough, well the 45% or so of us that have contributed have!!
Dan

Excellent!
And soooo true! Mr. J. told it like it is and how it should be!
Thanks for your history/civics lesson today!
Jon Peter

Oh my, my, John. This is a keeper, for sure. I knew who Tom was by the way. Where, when, and why have we veered off the straight and narrow into the muck and mire we find ourselves in today? I believe it began with a man named Frank, as in Franklin Delano Roosevelt.