THOMAS JEFFERSON
Few politicians understand the difference between scene-shifting and progress. Things shift, new names are applied, but the vicious circle continues.
I see no evidence that human nature has changed since my time, in this or any other country.
If the Republican Ship of State is leaking, the Democratic craft is drifting without sail or rudder. What your statesmen fail to understand is that progress is not induced by force but by free will. New political planks rammed into your platforms against the wishes of the majority are without significance. The phrase, “The Solid South,” which meant something vital at one time, has no meaning in these days of quick change and movie-show influences.
Democracy, in some sections, is a matter of climate. If you have come to a point where science and sentimentality are engaged in a drastic war, then the Democratic phalanx must undergo some rude changes.
The Democratic tail wagged the Republican dog for some time, but that curious spectacle has lost its hold on public interest. It is not now a question of one end wagging the other, but who will wag both. If Republicans stand for crude force, and Democrats for antebellum sentimentality, both are doomed together.
In the South, Democracy means politics at the polls, aristocracy in the parlor. In the North, Republicanism means the aristocracy of wealth.
However, your conception of social equality is undergoing modification.
In Washington’s time the slogan was revolution; in Lincoln’s time it was abolition; in your time it is prohibition, which reminds me that laws passed in haste bring long periods of repentance.
Effective effrontery is the result of courageous ignorance, for millions are more easily influenced by illusive promises than by the lessons of experience.
Modern civilization has hurried to meet four deadly things—riches, pleasures, materialism and war. But the tortoise is a better example of progress than the hare fleeing before the greyhound.