Word: virginians
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...mixture of both. As would happen again and again during his lifetime--and after his lifetime, right down to the present, when the question "What would Jefferson do?" feels as relevant to contemporary affairs as it did in the nation's early years--the institutions and ideas that the Virginian so strenuously advocated and eloquently defended carried him away from home, out of domestic seclusion and into history as the conscience of our country. It's the place where he truly belonged and still resides, not always comfortably but probably permanently...
Distances have shrunk since then, of course, and Jefferson's notion that the country's population would never strain its seemingly limitless resources comes off as ridiculously shortsighted now. What's more, the Virginian couldn't have foreseen the way in which America's thirst for oil would place it at the mercy of foreign powers. A global economy changes everything...
...complexity and expense of modern politics. When he first ran for President in 1800, the Electoral College and the House of Representatives decided elections, by and large, and there was little campaigning in the current sense. The nonstop advertising, showy conventions and hectic travel would have repelled the shy Virginian, who found public speaking burdensome. "In [the Founding Fathers'] minds, the person who was ambitious and wanted high office was the one person you should never trust with it," says Yale historian Joanne Freeman, author of Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. "They would have been horrified...
...Princeton University Press's exhaustive Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the 31st volume of which will be released this week, is one colossal diary. Begun in 1943 and scheduled to be completed by 2026--the bicentennial of Jefferson's death--the project includes more than 20,000 letters the prolific Virginian wrote in his lifetime as well as an abundance of correspondence he received. From the newest volume, edited by Princeton historian Barbara B. Oberg, we offer a sampler that includes never before published writings by Jefferson on Napoleon Bonaparte, the controversial presidential election of 1800 and the death...
...Some readers felt our reporting on various theories about Jesus' death was inappropriate for a newsmagazine. "We don't know why Jesus died. We don't even know if he existed," wrote a Virginian. "You might as well write an article titled 'What Is the Meaning of Life?' Such questions have no answers." A reader from Washington State asked, "Why not a discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or how Santa gets to every kid's house in one night?" And a snarky Californian let us know he is "looking forward to TIME...