#1243 Mister President

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2017

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

"Really? You don't think Jefferson has a geopolitical plan here?"

— Clay S. Jenkinson

This week, we return to the Jefferson 101 series and discuss Jefferson's first term as President. In particular, we discuss the Barbary pirates, the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark expedition.

Find this episode, along with further recommended reading, on the blog.

Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good Day Thomas Jefferson Hour podcast listeners nice to have you there always we must say we appreciate your support we appreciate you listening and now you'll hear from clay
0:17.0	David Spencer and now you'll hear from Clay. David Swenson, the semi-permanent guest host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour. This is back to Jefferson 101, so we've now taken him through his first term and I think it was a unique perspective we had.
0:26.0	We were working from Christopher Hitchins who has a wonderful monograph on Jefferson.
0:30.0	Yeah, but you turned me on to that years ago.
0:32.0	You said you need to read this and I did and in
0:35.0	prepping for this show I went back and I started reading it and it's amazing how much more
0:40.6	there is to get out of that book. I thought it was really fun. Well he was a major figure he's much more of
0:47.0	of a more there is to get out of that book. I thought it was really fun. Well he's a major figure, he's not a historian, you know, it was more of a treatment or a perspective.
0:48.0	Yeah, that's why I liked it. Yeah, he has prejudices and you know I love his work, his collection of essays called Arguably.
0:55.4	It's just a magnificent book but he loves Jefferson loves Thomas Payne.
1:00.1	He's a little skeptical of Jefferson but he's trying to make sense of who the real Jefferson
1:06.6	was.
1:07.6	There's so many Jefferson's you can kind of point to
1:15.0	point to and partially define what he wanted to figure out what's the essence of Thomas Jefferson.
1:16.0	Taking his lead we do talk about the Barbary pirates and that's a little dice because it is it's so much of the same rhetoric that you hear today.
1:24.6	He really believed this was a major injustice happening to people and it was and
1:28.9	he carried that on until he became president and he was actually able to do something.
1:34.4	You know, the project of civilization, think of it, I mean, due process, respect, rights of humanity, trial by jury, you know, all the things that we speak about
1:49.3	on the 4th of July and take for granted.
1:52.8	Those things were very dearly bought
1:55.6	over long centuries of agonizing setbacks
1:58.8	and breakthroughs and martyrdoms, people like Jefferson, Cromwell in England, John Locke,
	...

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