April 22, 2009: Nothing is new under the sun, and President Obama's recent activities has demonstrated that not knowing our history is a dangerous thing.
The following quote excerpts are taken from Richard Brookhiser's excellent biography 'Alexander Hamilton - American'. Hamilton found Thomas Jefferson's attachment to France disturbing: "Hamilton on more than one occasion used sexual imagery to condemn his opponents...he deplored Jefferson's "womanish attachment to France", and "womanish resentment against Great Britain...he wrote that , while, a "virtuous Citizen ...will regard his own country as a wife", there were Americans who "have a passion for a foreign mistress; as violent as it is irregular; and who, in the paroxisms of their love" are "too ready to sacrifice the real welfare of the ...family to their partiality for the object of their tenderness." [page 187].
In addition, Brookhiser relates, passion itself was a problem: "A passion that all the founders looked on with mistrust was ambition. They distrusted it even though they all, by definition, felt it...Yet they believed that any one among them, if he loved his own glory too much, could bring the republic down"[italics supplied].
The insight, the astuteness, that those men had, continues to amaze. If they were alive today, Obama would be snowed under by a deluge of "invitations to a duel". Look, Obama is supposed to be a constitutional lawyer, but he probably never studied American history, or, if he did, he's chosen to ignore the subject. Obama is claimed to be brilliant, and he brilliantly understands that the average person in this country has no knowledge of our history. Thanks to our public school education, secondary school students, for the most part, have been turned off by the subject.
It's time our younger generations, you know, those still in school up to those of our citizenry who are in, or approaching, middle age, who must begin reading the available histories, biographies, and related American history texts available. Of course, too many people can't concentrate on reading anything over 144 characters in length (or is it 114?). So much to this nation's chagrin, history will remain what's listed in their browser records, and this great nation will be subject to the whims and follies of our so-called leaders.
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