angels in the forms of kings

since we've been studying "making a new nation," in OC, i thought i'd share some highlights from thomas jefferson's first inaugural address:
(warning: first sentence is 89 words long!)

• the essential principles of our Government:
• a jealous care of the right of election by the people
• the supremacy of the civil over the military authority

• Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.

• And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions

• Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

"'history never repeats,' i tell myself before i go to sleep."--split enz