- HISTORY = CONSEQUENCES

How far has America and the West in general fallen from this ideal?

"Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence heralded a new kind of government, in which men would live under laws that they themselves had made. But he believed, along with his fellow Founders, that educated citizens would be the key to such a government—not intellectuals, professors, or geniuses like Milton but merely people who understood the difference between liberty and tyranny, who knew from the Bible or history books or family traditions or their own experience of the countries from which they’d escaped that tyranny has been the deplorably ordinary condition of mankind. Jefferson and George Washington strongly supported public schooling, which the 1650 Connecticut legal code required, and all the Founders envisioned citizens who read newspapers, freely discussed public men and public measures, made up their own minds, and voted accordingly. With their clear-eyed skepticism about human nature, knowing that passions and interests motivate men more often than reason does, the Founders had no fantasies about a nation of toga-wearing Athenian philosophers, but they did envision a republic of practical-minded people pursuing their own happiness and self-improvement (Dante’s pursuit of excellence), while jealously guarding their right to govern and think for themselves." [Myron Magnet]