#1428 A Few Plain Duties

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2021

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

President Jefferson speaks about the challenges he encountered during his first term as president, and offers his guiding principle that he views government as "a few plain duties" performed by a few honest men. He also offers some private advice to our new president on division and building consensus.

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 and 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 and 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 as always.
0:04.5	Thank you for listening and even though we're a few weeks into it, happy new year again to you all.
0:10.4	This week we speak with President Jefferson again. I'm so pleased we've talked to him three
0:14.8	weeks in a row and it's just been delightful. To get ready for this program, I've been rereading
0:20.4	Dumas Malone. I read the first hundred pages of his book on Jefferson's first term. It's a
0:28.4	sixth volume biography. It's regarded as definitive if a little too favorable to Jefferson, to a
0:34.6	apologetic towards Jefferson, but it's wonderful. It's one of the greatest biographies of the 20th
0:40.4	century and I haven't read it for a long time. You know, we got an inquiry from somebody, David Donovan
0:46.3	who was trying to buy Merrill Peterson's book and he said the Apple ebook cost $75, but I bet you
0:56.0	would say it's worth every penny. Well, no, yes and no. It's a great biography, but I think if you go
1:00.8	to ABEbooks.com or eBay, you can probably find one for a fraction of that cost. What's the man's name?
1:08.6	David Donovan. Actually, he was looking for an ebook. I actually did the same thing and he's right.
1:13.8	It's very expensive. I'm not sure why they do that. I have several copies. If he'll send me a check
1:18.4	for $22,000, I'll sign it and send it off to him. Noted. There are public libraries, of course.
1:24.9	I hate to bring this up because it's kind of sad, but I've learned that the Cuba trip is not going
1:31.0	to happen this year. One of the last things that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did was to put Cuba
1:39.2	on the terror watch list. There's a certain sense in which this crowd tried to do as much damage
1:51.2	in the last minute as it could possibly do or at least to accomplish things that would be
1:55.7	so politically unpalatable during normal days that they could just do it as a kind of a defiant
2:02.3	gesture going out. We've had our boot on the neck of Cuba for far too long since 1960. It
2:08.5	might have made sense once it makes absolutely no sense now. I do think that our policy with respect
2:13.7	to Cuba is really irrational and unsound. I met them in South Florida. I met the ex-pats
	...

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