Good Day podcast listeners of the Thomas Jefferson Hour and thank you very much those of you of the 1776 club who have chosen to support the Thomas Jefferson Hour

you make our lives worth living.

Yeah, it's great to have our listeners.

I meet a lot of them in my travels, David,

and they're so supportive,

and they take so much satisfaction from the Jefferson Hour.

The number one thing that people say to me is that they're glad to hear people speaking in

complete sentences.

And they're listening to you, I think. And that we speak in civility and rational discourse most of the time.

I think that people are hungry for some sort of a national conversation that we're not having and

although I think it's more likely to occur on national public radio than it is say on Fox or

MS NBC, I think there's a very widespread than it is say on Fox or MSNBC.

I think there's a very widespread eagerness for a return to a civil culture and that's, I know that's

what you try to bring to the Jefferson hour, that's what you try to bring to the Jefferson

hour that's what I try to bring to it and we have the joy and the discipline of

being able to to fashion what we say through the lens of one of the most extraordinary men who ever lived,

Thomas Jefferson.

So it's an enormous pleasure to do this.

And today's program is one that I take great delight in because I was reading this famous

characterization of Jefferson by his biographer James Parton in which he's

in tie an artery and survey a field and dance the minuet and so on and I realized how few of those skills we have.

Now a farmer in North Dakota and I know some of these people can weld can strip an engine can change the

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