This is a wonderful bit of trivia about American history.
Three of the nation’s Founding Fathers died on July 4.
All three were former presidents.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day in 1826. James Monroe died on this day a few years later.
John Adams wrote:
“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“T]he tax which will be paid for this purpose [education] is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They were giants … especially John Adams, and Abigail was no slouch either. What a great couple they made!
Adams and Jefferson were political adversaries, Adams believing in a strong federal government, Jefferson much more for state’s rights.
They were interesting and complex people. They were both very flawed individuals, but we cannot take away from them what they did to establish this country.
While they fought each other politically early on, they mellowed out in their old age and began an extensive correspondence.
When Adams lay dying, he said “Thomas Jefferson still survives.”
He was wrong, Jefferson was already dead.
Of course, TJ undoubtedly supported leaving his slaves in ignorance — because they were not “people”.
Yes, Jefferson was a slave owner, he did not even manumit his slaves upon his death (which at least George Washington did) and he probably slept with his slave Sally Hemmings (which I consider rape, since she was a slave and had no choice).
However, Adams is not exactly the perfect example of a Founding Father. Take a look at The Alien and Sedition Acts. Sounds almost like something Trump would approve of.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
“Flawed” in what ways … They were products of the time in which they lived, and for the most part contained within their thoughts and actions a kernel of a progressive vision for humanity. How do they compare with today;s crop of political degenerates, from both political parties?
“Political degenerates” indeed!
“Public Schools should take Precedence”
Prescient presidents
For the Republic
Setting the precedents
Schools that are public
Thank you, Diane. I went to the link provided after I read this post.
My hope for this country is that we find our soul, and soon.
Tough crowd here . I question where we would have been in the South of 1800s. Unfortunately we have not moved all that far toward equality . Driving (walking)while black a crime punishable by death. 1/3 of the country voting for Trump . Nah race has nothing to do with that, ya think.
Copied and posted on my page. No, the “Founders” were not perfect men. None of us are. Judge them for their failures and judge them for the foundation they laid down for what has been the greatest nation on the planet.
Great quotes from Jefferson and Adams!
Our problems apparently are timeless.
One of my favorite presidents is Calvin Coolidge. He is the only president to have been born on the 4th of July.
Diane,
Pat Buchanan posted the following questions about this nation.
IS AMERICA STILL A NATION?
Pat Buchanan: ‘Are we passing on the house we inherited – or observing its demolition?’
In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks of “one people.” The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins, “We the people …”
And who were these “people”?
In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as “one united people … descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs. …”
If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one nation and one people?
We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country. We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess the same religion. We are evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.
Federalist No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today’s elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength. But is this true, or a tenet of trendy ideology?
After the attempted massacre of Republican congressmen at that ball field in Alexandria, Fareed Zakaria wrote: “The political polarization that is ripping this country apart” is about “identity … gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation (and) social class.” He might have added – religion, morality, culture and history.
Zakaria seems to be tracing the disintegration of our society to that very diversity that its elites proclaim to be its greatest attribute: “If the core issues are about identity, culture and religion … then compromise seems immoral. American politics is becoming more like Middle Eastern politics, where there is no middle ground between being Sunni or Shiite.”
Among the issues on which we Americans are at war with one another – abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, white cops, black crime, Confederate monuments, LGBT rights, affirmative action.
Was the discovery of America and conquest of this continent from 1492 to the 20th century among the most glorious chapters in the history of man? Or was it a half-millennium marked by mankind’s most scarlet of sins: the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the annihilation of indigenous cultures, the spoliation of a virgin land?
Is America really “God’s Country”? Or was Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, justified when, after 9/11, he denounced calls of “God Bless America!” with the curse “God Damn America!”?
With its silence, the congregation seemed to assent.
In 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance many of us recited daily at the end of noon recess in the schoolyard was amended to read, “one nation under God, indivisible.”
Are we still one nation under God?
At the Democratic Convention in Charlotte to renominate Barack Obama, a motion to put “God” back into the platform was hooted and booed by half the assembly.
With this July 4 long weekend, many writers have bewailed the animus Americans exhibit toward one another and urged new efforts to reunite us. Yet, recall again those first words of Jefferson in 1776:
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them …”
Are we approaching such a point? Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted, win the approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourth of our states, if it were not already the supreme law of the land? How would a national referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans are already seeking a new constitutional convention?
All of which invites the question: Are we still a nation? And what is a nation? French writer Ernest Renan gave us the answer in the 19th century:
“A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things … constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received.
“Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past with great men and glory … is the social capital upon which the national idea rests.
These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them again.”
Does this sound at all like us today?
Watching our Lilliputians tearing down statues and monuments, renaming buildings and streets, rewriting history books to replace heroes and historical truths with the doings of ciphers, are we disassembling the nation we once were?
“One loves in proportion to the sacrifices that one has committed and the troubles that one has suffered,” writes Renan, “One loves the house that one has built and that one passes on.”
Are we passing on the house we inherited – or observing its demolition?
Jscheidell,
The House we call America belongs to all of us, not just white Christian men.
White children are only 50% of all children. By 2040, whites will no longer be a majority of Americans.
Americans are white, black, Latino, and Asian. Americans are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and every other imaginable religion, as well as Atheists. Americans are straight, gay, transgender, bisexual, and transgender.
That is America.
It belongs to all of us.
Pat Buchanan wanted it to stop changing.
It kept changing.
Love it or leave it.
You and I agree on many things. My first wife was Chinese, and a Buddhist. My current wife is Russian, and a Russian Orthodox. In my family, we are Baptist, Catholic, Latter-Day Saint, Lutheran, and Wiccan (my brother is a Wiccan).
America is a nation, dedicated to a proposition, not a religion, nor an ethnic group, or a race.
God bless America!
A term I thoroughly despise: “America, love it or leave it”.
I hope it was meant with all the sarcasm that I sense.
“Among the issues on which we Americans are at war with one another – abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, white cops, black crime, Confederate monuments, LGBT rights, affirmative action.”
On these issues, America is stuck in the distant past—perhaps as far back as the times of the founding parents. Pretty embarrassing.
“Are we still one nation under God?”
A specious question at best.
An egregiously divisive one at worst.
But to answer your question jscheidell: This country was never a nation “under god”, can’t and never will be as there is no god of which you speak, other than in the minds of some. An opinion, especially one as logically compromised as the concept of a deity that controls all, does not necessarily equate to a truth statement.
Good ol wordpress my comment @ 8:42 is in moderation. Ay ay ay!