“Freedom is messy and ugly, but it’s the only thing that works. It is the only condition that creates beauty. It creates the wealth that lets us push our way past our constant failures of personal compassion, sympathy and encouragement, so that those who don’t win are fed and housed and can live.”
PEGGY NOONAN, The Wall Street Journal
Franklin and Jefferson understood balance. They were part of an Enlightenment era that embraced the scientific method of testing and revising beliefs based on evidence. Both of them studied Isaac Newton, whose mechanics explained how contending forces could be brought into equilibrium. Their goal on contentious issues was not to triumph but to find the right balance, an art that has been lost today. Compromisers may not make great heroes, Franklin liked to say, but they do make great democracies.
WALTER ISAACSON, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
No one who makes it in America does it alone. Every billionaire who invented something in the garage traveled on roads the lowest-salaried taxpayers contributed to. They paid for the schools that taught that Silicon Valley workforce. Taxpayers gave the tech titans the economic and political system that allowed their flourishing. That system was, literally, won and protected with the blood, sweat, and valor of tens of millions of soldiers.
PEGGY NOONAN, The Wall Street Journal
Money and power corrupt. The proper response to this ancient truth is not “populism,” which expresses the inchoate resentments of a subordinated class, and which has shown itself to be helpless against gross abuses. The one thing needed is democracy. We have seen people speak and act from a deep awareness of their uniquely legitimate authority. We have seen their humanity, their dignity, and their wisdom. At the same time we have also seen the degradations that follow from arrogance and impunity. The contrast is as stark and instructive as any moral fable.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON, The New York Review of Books
Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth.
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
