#1316 James Madison (Part Two)

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

"to the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression." — James Madison

We discuss James Madison again this week, President Jefferson's good friend and ally. Madison was the de facto father of the American Constitution. We look at his preparation, his advocacy of the Virginia Plan, and his work to try to ratify this somewhat imperfect instrument. We talked a great deal with President Jefferson about the Constitutional Convention. Jefferson wasn't there, but Madison kept him apprised of progress. Madison wanted a more centralized national government than Jefferson was comfortable with. Jefferson believed in the 10th amendment: that powers not delegated to the national government belong to the states, which is something that haunts us to this day because of its vagueness. The question is, what is America? Is it a compact of sovereign states? Or is it as a nation state whose constitution begins with the words, "We the People"?

Find this episode, along with recommended reading, on the blog. Support the show by joining the 1776 Club or by donating to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, Inc. You can learn more about our Cultural Tours & Retreats with Clay S. Jenkinson at jeffersonhour.com/tours. Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, welcome to this podcast edition of the Thomas Jefferson, or David, James Madison.
0:06.6	It was a listener question that prompted you to say let's do some programs on Madison,
0:10.8	now we're in it.
0:11.8	It was great fun too.
0:12.8	And we both did a lot of reading.
0:15.3	I know you came in with a stack of books.
0:17.2	The book that I really really inspired me
0:19.4	was The Three Lives of James Madison.
0:21.6	I've never read it.
0:22.1	I'm gonna go get it.
0:23.3	No, a film. Yes, a massive work. A massive work. The three lives.
0:26.7	One of the three lives of Madison. Genius, partisan, and president.
0:31.1	He was a partisan. Point you made in last week's program that he was like Jefferson's political operator.
0:37.0	He was.
0:38.0	And Jefferson's more like, oh, can't we all get along?
0:40.0	I just like to stay home and grow peaches. There's one thing I wanted to
0:45.1	bring up that was in the show if I can jump ahead. Yes sir. And that was
0:48.8	towards I think in the third segment you had a book and you read a quote from Madison about the free press and I know it's in the show but I kind of wanted to talk more could you read it for people?
0:59.7	And so I want all of our listeners just to think for a moment of what you would expect Jefferson
1:03.5	to say about freedom of the press.
1:05.5	Some extremely high-minded, noble poetic thing about given the choice between government
1:10.2	without newspapers and newspapers without government.
	...

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