Farmer Tom

I’ve just returned from four days in our Nation’s capital. Each time I visit, I retrace steps I took as a wide-eyed journalism intern in 1981. While much is the same, the city has grown and the metropolitan area seems oddly insulated from the current economic woes confronting most of the country – witness the ongoing construction, menu prices, hotel costs, and real estate values. There are, without question, areas within the District struggling with poverty and I witnessed a fair number of people sleeping in parks and on benches – I even drove past the current “Occupiers’” tent city.

Throughout the District, buildings with regal facades share blocks with modern office complexes and small sundries shops. Traffic remains steady and there seems to be a disproportionate number of foreign luxury cars on the street (Michiganders notice these things). Business suits pass quickly and heels clatter through lobbies.

Observing Rome, Tacitus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus) noted: “All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome. “ I don’t assert that Washington, D.C., deserves such a scathing indictment, but I sometimes wonder what a fellow farmer, Thomas Jefferson, would think about modern America.

I’m fairly certain he’d be quite proud of many national achievements while being aghast of other developments. I’d hope he’d be embarrassed by his documented prejudices against blacks and come to share our country’s collective pride that an African American President can reside in the White House and others of color have distinguished themselves as Cabinet members, military officers, entrepreneurs, Supreme Court Justices, and in other leadership roles. I believe he would be fascinated with NASA’s achievements and smile knowingly that the Louisiana Purchase was a good investment!


I don’t think he’d be quite as pleased with the bureaucratic bloat, red tape, lobbyists, and the growing concentration of power at the national level. From his first inaugural address:

“Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

As we compare our current country with the vision of our founders, it’s good to know that even though they didn’t have everything right, they created a system whereby we can constantly improve.

Later in that same speech, Jefferson acknowledged his own potential fallibility:

“I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.”

As I settle down for a quiet evening back home, I think I’ll read some more speeches from our nation’s history and reflect on the balance of vision and humility that were key ingredients to bring us this far and continue to be vital as our republic approaches its 250th year.

Photos reported to be in the public domain.