#1345 Independence Day
Listening to America
Listening to America
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2019
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For our annual Jefferson Hour 4th of July show, we speak with President Jefferson (as portrayed by humanities scholar Clay S. Jenkinson) about the founding ideals of America and his participation in the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
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 Clay's cultural tours & retreats at jeffersonhour.com/tours. Check out our new merch. You can find Clay's publications on our website, along with a list of his favorite books on Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and other topics. Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good Day, Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners. |
| 0:03.0 | Two things. |
| 0:04.0 | First, thank you for listening. |
| 0:06.0 | And second, happy Independence Day. |
| 0:08.0 | I agree. |
| 0:09.0 | You know, I try to, in preparing for this program, |
| 0:12.0 | we do an annual 4th of July this program we do an annual |
| 0:14.4 | Jefferson's birthday program we do an annual |
| 0:17.0 | January 1st program and a Christmas program and a Thanksgiving program |
| 0:20.4 | unless we forget we always do the fourth. |
| 0:23.0 | But I'm thinking, well, what should we talk about this week? |
| 0:27.0 | How do you talk about this? |
| 0:28.0 | Well, of course, the story of how he came to write it is just such a great story partly because of John Adams but I've been thinking |
| 0:35.6 | about this and I know that you know you and I agree on one thing and that is |
| 0:41.0 | that this is the 4th of July somehow has to be reflective at some level at least briefly. |
| 0:48.8 | It's that important. |
| 0:50.4 | If Jefferson had to pick one and one only holiday, that would be it. |
| 0:55.0 | Because I think, well I've seen this, you know, at Madicello and other places they have the naturalization ceremony on the 4th of July. |
| 1:04.4 | It's unbelievably moving because these are people from Iraq and Pakistan and Ukraine and Korea and |
| 1:12.2 | Argentina and Chile, |
| 1:14.0 | then they come here and they want to be Americans |
| 1:18.0 | and they have to learn to be Americans, |
... |
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