Today we have a new President and I for one am hopeful that things in the United States of America will begin to turn for the better. It won't be easy and things will not happen overnight; it will take months, if not years, to make things right again. It is never a bad idea, in these troubled times, to look to the Sage of Monticello for some solid advice:
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
It was a great day. I'm so happy and grateful to live in a country where the transfer of power is peaceful.
Lisa, Yes, it was a great day, and for so many reasons. Though not without their imperfections, the Founders were some pretty prescient men (and a few unfortunately unheralded women, too - I thought it interesting that one of the commentators I heard yesterday mentioned that there is no memorial to the Adamses and that, if there were, it should be to John and Abigail).
Good words. I'm almost through reading a large collection of Letters by Thomas Jefferson. To my surprise, he is amazingly intelligent about not only his own time but also the future. He had a great ability to look forward into history. He was rarely wrong about things that he thought about and he wrote about them eloquently. I ran across a passage the other day that reminded me of Geo W Bush. T. Jefferson was talking about the mad King George and how he had continually kept the British in war, made their debts beyond the ability to pay them back and generally kept the rich in place by this madness. Sounds familiar to me. Nothing new under the sun. It's so great to have a new President that can speak so eloquently and clearly. Let's hope the American people get behind him rather than hound him.
Jefferson was a very interesting man indeed. I'm currently working on Vol. 5 of Jefferson & His Time by Dumas Malone (the audio book). All 6 volumes are over 110 hours and I'll probably listen again because I'm sure I've missed some stuff along the way. What's the title of the collection your reading? I'd be interested though the only thing I found in a quick search was a collection of the letters between TJ and John Adams.