I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sense of loss regarding the ideals of freedom and minimal governance from the era of Thomas Jefferson.
George Will's quote conveys a feeling of nostalgia for a time when liberty was idealized, emphasizing a perceived decline in American values. It suggests that society has strayed from a vision of minimal government intervention, leading to a collective sense of melancholy about the loss of innocence and the expansive freedom that once characterized American life.
In practice
Use this quote during a discussion about the evolution of American political values.
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?
Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate; And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
You try to be yourself, do only what you've always done and like to do, and right away, you're tagged as an oddball.
It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is
...skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground.
With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators.
Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
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