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#971 Constitution Redux

from 2012 by Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson

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In show #968, A New Constitution, President Thomas Jefferson discussed his thoughts on the need for updating our constitution every generation. The show generated many questions and comments so this week is devoted to presenting those questions and further discussion. In Jefferson's letter to Madison on the subject, written on September 6, 1789, he writes:

"On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right."

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from 2012, track released May 13, 2012

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Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson

The Thomas Jefferson Hour is a weekly radio program dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson.

Nationally acclaimed humanities scholar and award-winning first-person interpreter of Thomas Jefferson, Clay S. Jenkinson, portrays Jefferson on the program, and he answers listener questions while in the persona of our third president.
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