Madison And Jefferson (What it meant to me)

   The Significance of —— 

                        Madison And Jefferson

                                    By Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg

                                            ——-       To Me

 Wow! My Founder’s readings have been as follows:

Miracle at Philadelphia – American Creation – George Washington – Washington A Life – John Adams – Benjamin Franklin – Thomas Paine and then a short jump in time to The Eloquent President.

Now I can add this one and I am going to consider it my “Go To – Founder’s Book”. I say this not because its excellence is greater than the others but simply from the fact that most of our founders interacted with this couple. There is a kind of fruition of all the up front work done by the original leaders of our revolution which became more focused during the presidential lives of these two. In other words our country’s paths to the future began to appear as these two, together and separately, pushed, shoved, explained and pleaded in order to kick our country’s original cans down the road. Some of that last sentence sounds unfair as I re-read but I certainly have no intention of being unfair. Kicking the can down the road is rarely the simple concept of putting things off in our form of government. If we had a dictatorship then, yes, an empty can being kicked down the road would signify putting something off. Our founders’ method of government made kicking the can a whole new ball-game. As we kick the can down the road the can begins to be re-filled. Sometimes the can becomes larger and sometimes it becomes smaller but it always is given the opportunity to be re-filled with a more precious cargo. A cargo of goods intended to serve our society in a better way. Does it always work? No!. Does the cargo spoil sometimes due to aging? Yes! Does the can and its cargo sometimes get so large we cannot kick and manipulate it in order to keep it in the road? Yes! Did our founder’s provide a system which solves the failure problems? No! They provided a system that can grow new roots and sprout new growth because the required nutrients come from the people: the kinds of peoples whom will use the founder’s gift for self correction and not selfish benefits. I am thinking of the law as being a can we should often kick at.

I am not a speed reader and the format of this book made the reading of it slow for me because there was so many times I had to double-check who the quotation marks were being used for. Were they forMadison?Jefferson? or some other great person of those early times?  Also there were times I would be reading thinking the statement was a quotation but then realize that there were no marks so in fact at that time I was reading the author’s thoughts. So, you can see there was much re-reading involved. There was also much informative re-reading after I had officially finished because there were many facts I wanted to double-check and this in turn led me to more than just fact checking.

I have said enough here that you know this book will be with me for a long time and I mean this as sincere praise to the writers. Oooohh? I almost forgot. The reading of all the books mentioned here has brought me to a point where I have a strong feeling that all our great originals would urge me to know more about our foreign founder – General Lafayette. I now have in my hands a copy of his memoirs.