The Jefferson Rule
Why We Think the Founding Fathers Have All the Answers
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Narrated by:
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Tom Perkins
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By:
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David Sehat
About this listen
Beginning with the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the future of the nation and continuing through the Civil War, the New Deal, the Reagan Revolution, and Obama and the Tea Party, many pols have asked, "What would the founders do?" instead of "What is the common good today?" Recently both the right and the left have used the founders to sort through such issues as voting rights, campaign finance, free speech, gun control, taxes, and war and peace. They have used an outdated context to make sense of contemporary concerns.
This oversimplification obscures our real issues. From Jefferson to this very day, we have looked to the 18th century to solve our problems, even though the fathers themselves were a querulous and divided group who rarely agreed. Coming to terms with the past, David Sehat suggests, would be the start of a productive debate. And in this account, which is by turns informative, colorful, and witty, he shows us why.
©2015 David Sehat (P)2015 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- Genius, Partisan, President
- By: Noah Feldman
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
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Cogently organized, meticulously balanced
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 06-15-18
By: Noah Feldman
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, Part 1
- From Washington to Taft
- By: Larry Schweikart
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Back by popular demand, the bestselling Politically Incorrect Guides provide an unvarnished, unapologetic overview of the topics every American needs to know. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, Part 1 profiles America’s early presidents, from George Washington to William Howard Taft.
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Ruining History to Own the Libs
- By Dee on 11-11-20
By: Larry Schweikart
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Fear Itself
- The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
- By: Ira Katznelson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 22 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Redefining our traditional understanding of the New Deal, Fear Itself finally examines this pivotal American era through a sweeping international lens that juxtaposes a struggling democracy with enticing ideologies like Fascism and Communism. Ira Katznelson, "a towering figure in the study of American and European history" (Cornel West), boldly asserts that, during the 1930s and 1940s, American democracy was rescued yet distorted by a unified band of southern lawmakers who safeguarded racial segregation as they built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power.
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History in Context of Political Science Analysis
- By zsuzsanna on 08-27-15
By: Ira Katznelson
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American Dialogue
- The Founders and Us
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue, Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts.
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A fine work, even with the editorializing
- By Casey Kerrick on 11-24-18
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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The American Political Tradition
- And the Men Who Made it
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Christopher Lasch - foreword
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics", Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
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Our Divided Political Heart
- The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent
- By: E. J. Dionne
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Our Divided Political Heart will be the must-listen book of the 2012 election campaign. Offering an incisive analysis of how hyper-individualism is poisoning the nation's political atmosphere, E. J. Dionne Jr., argues that Americans can't agree on who we are because we can't agree on who we've been, or what it is, philosophically and spiritually, that makes us Americans.
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Good points and lots of good information
- By Jamie B on 08-15-12
By: E. J. Dionne
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Behold, America
- The Entangled History of "America First" and "the American Dream"
- By: Sarah Churchwell
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of 20th-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases - the "American dream" and "America First" - that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality.
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History we need to know
- By Caroline Pufalt on 12-09-18
By: Sarah Churchwell
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James Madison and the Making of America
- By: Kevin R. C. Gutzman
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In James Madison and the Making of America, historian Kevin Gutzman looks beyond the way James Madison is traditionally seen - as "The Father of the Constitution” - to find a more complex and sometimes contradictory portrait of this influential Founding Father and the ways in which he influenced the spirit of today's United States.
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Not a traditional biography
- By David on 12-14-12
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The Fiery Trial
- Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Eric Foner gives us the definitive history of Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery in America. Foner's Lincoln emerges as a leader, one whose greatness lies in his capacity for moral and political growth through real engagement with allies and critics alike. This powerful work will transform our understanding of the nation's greatest president and the issue that mattered most.
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Great Book about a Monstrous Injustice
- By Cynthia on 07-29-13
By: Eric Foner
What listeners say about The Jefferson Rule
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- KEVIN E FARRIS
- 07-08-15
Misguided reliance on the Founders
Not unlike the book, The Quartet, this text effectively demonstrates how utterly ridiculous the constant references to our Founding Fathers as a defense or justification for current political positions truly is. Tea Partiers talk of "No compromise" and "stay true to the text of the Constitution" when the text was specifically born of Compromise and intentionally left the Founding Document replete with ambiguities intended as a framework upon which a functioning Federal government to be built and allow for general principles to guide elected leaders rather than constrain them.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Philo
- 09-25-15
The Constitution's contradictions and ambiguities
Yes, there were deals cut, and gaps, intentional or not, in this document, as events emerged in later history. Jefferson himself was at moments idealistic and at others rather irresponsible and at odds with his own windy statements. (Witness the glowing otherworldly declaration of God-given equality in the Declaration, and his own conduct with slaves.) None of the founders was a perfect philosopher or prognosticator. We can start with something as glaring as the mealy-mouthed papering-over of slavery issues, in service of uniting various the disparate states into a nation (which had to be done, perhaps, as it seemed at the time, to ascend the next rung to nationhood and deal with other competitive sovereigns), and what an awful gaping wound that proved (and has proved with a long shadow into today) to be. I say all this as an ardent admirer of the U.S. Constitution. This book is a fine, listenable, extended reflection on various aspects of the matter. It has a point of view, but never so annoyingly as to preclude stimulating some worthwhile thinking.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Gil Hernandez
- 01-23-17
had to read for class
The struggle was real. It bored me to death but we had to read it. I didn't even finish it.
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