Word: jefferson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...18th century, for example, was clearly one marked by statecraft: in 1776 alone there are Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin writing the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith publishing The Wealth of Nations and George Washington leading the Revolutionary forces. The 17th century, on the other hand, despite such colorful leaders as Louis XIV and the ch?teau he left us, will be most remembered for its science: Galileo exploring gravity and the solar system, Descartes developing modern philosophy and Newton discovering the laws of motion and calculus. And the 16th will be remembered for the flourishing of the arts...
That may prove to be more of a curse than a blessing. Last week a federal judge struck down Cleveland's voucher program, ruling that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. Citing Jefferson and Madison, Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. wrote that because four-fifths of the private schools participating in the voucher program are religious, the program robs parents of "genuine choice" between sectarian and secular schools, thus "advancing religion through government-supported religious indoctrination." The decision is the fourth in recent months to bar the use of vouchers in parochial schools, and voucher opponents--mainly teachers...
...Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson has fared the worst at the hands of revisionists. If he has managed to keep his place on Mount Rushmore, he has been vilified almost everywhere else in recent years as a slave-owning hypocrite and racist; a political extremist; an apologist for the vicious, botched French Revolution; and in general, somewhat less the genius remembered in our folklore than a provincial intellectual and tinkerer...
...example--he was an obsessive record keeper who made daily notes on everything from barometric readings to the progress of 29 varieties of vegetables at Monticello--yet he somehow lost track of his debts and died bankrupt. The historian Paul Johnson has catalogued a few of the inconsistencies: Jefferson was an elitist who complained bitterly of elites; a humorless man whose favorite books were Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy; a soft-spoken intellectual sometimes given to violent, inflammatory language ("The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants") that...
...still burning. His rage starts with the killers. Rohrbough is the one who took down the two crosses meant to commemorate the shooters alongside the victims. But he has other culprits in his sights. "For 20 minutes the Jefferson sheriff knew absolutely where Klebold and Harris were in the building," he says. "For 20 minutes they listened to them murdering children, and they did absolutely nothing." As for the school, he charges, "jocks could get away with anything. If they wanted to punch a kid in the mouth and walk away, they could. Had I known this, my son wouldn...