#1491 American Character
Listening to America
Listening to America
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2022
⏱️ 56 minutes
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Summary
David Swenson speaks with President Jefferson about the American character, both as citizens and as a nation. This program originally aired in May of 2017.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good day citizens. Good day podcast listeners for the Thomas Jefferson hour. And before we begin |
| 0:06.0 | this week, I want to thank our 1776 club supporters for choosing to support the Thomas Jefferson |
| 0:13.2 | hour. We can't tell you enough how much we appreciate that support. And always like to point out |
| 0:19.4 | that the show really is listener supported. So thanks much. And this week, President Jefferson |
| 0:26.4 | talks about American character. This was your theme. So what brought you to this? What brought |
| 0:33.9 | me to it is the way society has changed the viewpoint of government. I think it's always good to |
| 0:41.3 | stand back once in a while. For me, particularly, I love doing the research. I love finding these |
| 0:47.8 | things that Washington said and Adam said and Jefferson said. And I was left after reading about |
| 0:55.6 | with the thought that they were kind of surprised by what happened to American character after |
| 1:03.0 | the Revolutionary War ended and government began to form. Jefferson in the show talks about |
| 1:12.7 | envisioned something more like Thomas Moore's utopia. And it didn't turn out that way. And I was |
| 1:18.3 | surprised that Mr. Jefferson was not surprised. Well, there are periods when we're closer. |
| 1:25.5 | So after World War II, until about 1970, there was this period of sort of growth in higher ed, |
| 1:34.6 | growth in public education, civil rights movements, the women's movement, recognition for American |
| 1:43.4 | Indians. There was a sense that we were kind of finishing the last things that had been lingering, |
| 1:51.1 | that hadn't been done yet, and that higher ed and public ed were going to be the central |
| 1:57.1 | institutions that led to this sort of new completion of the American Revolutionary Agenda |
| 2:04.5 | and the Enlightenment. And then it kind of stalled out, and I mean no personal disrespect, |
| 2:09.8 | but the Reagan Revolution is a pivotal moment. The country sort of said, well, maybe we've |
| 2:17.0 | maybe too much, maybe we pull back here, maybe there's been the 60s were too volatile, too crazy, |
| 2:23.9 | too much social change, too much abrupt adjustment of our systems, too much judicial activism, |
| 2:29.5 | whatever it was. And since 1980, the country has been kind of moving back away from that period. |
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