Word: jeffersonian
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This is not to imply that the values of society at large map neatly onto those of the armed services. Just try telling your drill sergeant you intend to uphold Jeffersonian principles of individualism throughout Hell Week. There is a tension here--a mutual tugging at the boundaries between civil right and military imperative. But the latter is definitely constrained by the former...
What does it mean to be a Jeffersonian? You must pick your Jefferson. Every other American statesman, Henry Adams wrote, could be portrayed "with a few broad strokes of the brush," but Jefferson "only touch by touch with a fine pencil, and the perfection of the likeness depended upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of semitransparent shadows...
...symbolized by the intensely scrutinized SAT. But the SAT is only a portion of "the big test" of Lemann's title. In his book, Lemann argues convincingly that the academic elitism of the American meritocracy, structured by its system of higher education, never lived up to its morally defensible Jeffersonian ideal of educating an intellectual few who would serve and advance the national community. Rather, the current system of selection for higher education based on the related criteria of academic performance, scholastic aptitude and IQ, has become a method of distributing society's pecuniary rewards to a select few without...
...intensely physical guy who grew up in a household with four brothers and no sisters and who never did very well as a student, McGwire, 35, has embraced a Jeffersonian rationality. And at the same time, he's got this softness that also plays against type. If Aristotle and Oprah had spawned, and there was, like, a lot of red dye around, the result would have been Mark McGwire. He's deeply devoted to his son and his charity for sexually abused children. He's been going to a therapist every week since 1991, and plans on continuing long after...
After Jefferson's death in 1826, Thomas, Madison and Eston all ended up as freedmen within 25 miles of one another near the town of Chillicothe, Ohio. The brothers were quite fair, being only an eighth black, and Jeffersonian in appearance: tall with reddish hair and gray eyes. But Thomas would become a leader in the black community, founding an African Methodist church. Madison put down roots near a mulatto settlement and also stayed in the black community. "Though we consider it a gift of God, our one enduring question is why Madison chose to stay black when it might...