Welcome to the Nodd Old Better Show, I'm your host Paul Vocalzant, and this is episode number 235.

As part of our Smithsonian Associates, Art of Living Interview Series, our guest today on the Not

All Better Show is Professor John Firling.

John Firling is a professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia.

Professor Firling is a leading authority on American revolutionary history,

and he is the author of several books, including his newest Apostles of Revolution, Jefferson, Payne, Monroe, and the struggle against the

old order in America and Europe, which is the subject of his upcoming presentation at the Smithsonian Associates program, America's

Authentic Revolutionaries, Jefferson, Payne, and Monroe. Professor John Firling has appeared in television documentaries on PBS, the History Channel,

C-SPAN Book TV and the Learning Channel, and we'll be talking about his new book, among other things.

Jefferson's resentment of British... about his new book, among other things.

Jefferson's resentment of British authoritarianism

had led him down the road of revolution.

But so, too, had his abhorrence of the growing inequities in wealth, power, and opportunities

among the free people in Virginia.

His residence in France as the US minister to France had provided a first-hand look at the result of what he called the enormous inequality producing such misery to the bulk of mankind within Europe.

It aroused Jefferson's fear that in time the same evil would take hold in his country and eradicate the

sparkling promise of revolutionary America.

He had not been in Europe long before he wrote to James Madison that despite the earth having been given as a common stock for man to labor and live on one generation of the elite after another had wielded their

power to invent legal devices for hoarding their wealth and denying others the opportunity to improve their status. That of course is our guest today, Professor John Firling, who will be at the Smithsonian Associates Program presenting America's Authentic Revolutionaries,

Jefferson, Payne, and Monroe, which will be available at the Smithsonian Program for

Purchase and Signing July 24th, 2018 at the Ripley Center in Washington, D.C.

Please join me in welcoming to the Not Old Better Show via internet phone, Professor John Firling.

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