Word: jeffersonism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hamilton and Jefferson...
...reasons Jefferson gave for the paucity of spirit in this country sound superficial, but then a single night's resurrection could hardly acquaint him with the way in which industrialism and more recently technology have altered the American personality. Fragmented into numerical units by an insensitive bureaucracy, separated from much that is natural, fixed into a lock-step system, and forever cajoled to pursue materialistic affluence, no wonder so many Americans have lost spirit...
When society uses technology in such a way that the individual's personality is not numbed, then he will feel responsibility for something beyond his own selfish interests. Mr. Jefferson's vantage point should allow him to see that Nixon is not to blame...
...SARTORISES are Jefferson, Mississippi's banking family. Once powerful plantation aristocrats, but now needing to let their land out to sharecroppers, they hold tenaciously onto their aristocratic facade hoping desperately for the Old South's return. The family is characterized by a savage stubborn streak and a suicidal recklessness, which contrasts with the demure tones of their surroundings. Faulkner's countryside is saturated with heat. The days are endless, windless, dissolving afternoons and slow silver moon of 'opaline tranquillity.' He peoples his book with "Negroes, slow and aimless as figures of a dark placed dream." And his characters' movements...
...nearly dawn. The two ghostly figures stood and started for their daytime retreats: Jefferson to his monument on the edge of the city, skirted by freeways, engulfed in noise and automobile exhaust, the 18th century man of enlightenment and his lifelong motto -"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God"-face to face with the 20th century; and Hamilton to his pedestal in front of the Treasury building, facing a lovely green park just across a narrow, shady street from the White House...