Good day Thomas Jefferson Hour Podcast Listers and as I always say thank you so much for listening and a happy 4th of July

The 4th of July. The 4th of July, which is the nation's birthday,

and it is a celebration that is essentially identical

all over the United States. There are coolers and there are beers and there are

broadwares and hot dogs and hamburgers and fireworks and you can go anywhere

in America and see fireworks on the 4th of July. But we don't go there in the show.

We talk to President Jefferson this week,

and one thing that he has never done and he did this week

is to read the Declaration of Independence

in its entirety.

Pretty amazing. I sat here and read it out at your request.

It's a pretty amazing document.

You know, we almost never, I almost never read it.

You know the preamble, you know the ending with anything.

Oh yeah, they're quartering troops and stirring up the Native Americans and encouraging the slaves to revolt and taking us across the ocean for our trials, not with juries of our peers and shutting down our

legislatures and so on you read all that but you know you think okay blah blah

more yeah yada yada yada but then when you actually sit down I never think yada yada. Oh I do. But now when I read it out I thought, wow, you know,

that we... Jefferson obviously is writing a propaganda piece. And he says he did it the first

draft in a day. Well, but he,'t admit this, but he did have one thing to help him.

And that was the Virginia Declaration of Rights that had been done by his friend George Mason.

Right, Mason doesn't get enough credit, does he?

And so Jefferson actually had that document and he himself, Jefferson had written something

...