When America was young, its leaders had no trouble retiring from public service and public life. That’s not universally true now.
Will the debt ceiling bill negotiated by President Joe Biden, left, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy be a lasting solution?
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Compromises, no matter how horrible, have long been used to solve seemingly intractable political problems – but at a cost.
‘Our machines have now been running for 70. or 80. years,’ an old Thomas Jefferson, right, wrote to an even older John Adams, left.
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Americans have long nurtured mixed feelings about age and aged leaders. Yet during the country’s founding, a young America admired venerable old sages.
During President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, many Congressional Democrats stood and clapped, but the GOP did not.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
The celebration of generous portions, meat and fat as masculine and patriotic would have been alien to Washington and Jefferson, who advocated vegetables and moderation as American ideals.
African penguins end up “parroting” each other’s voices.
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A scholar of 18th-century America and the founders analyzes the Supreme Court opinion overturning the constitutional right to abortion, which he says relies on an incomplete version of US history.
There are lots of official photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin shirtless, including this one from August 2017.
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A leader’s machismo can lead to war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has long displayed his version of hyper-masculinity. A historian says that for America’s founders, wars never fed their egos.
Protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting a whiskey tax during George Washington’s presidency.
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Like today, passions were strong and political discourse was inflamed in late 18th-century America. Angry mobs torched buildings. Virginians drank a toast to George Washington’s speedy death.
Protests against mandates and quarantines get the Founding Fathers’ ideas wrong.
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The Founding Fathers were unrelenting in their commitment to the idea that circumstances can arise that require public officials to take actions abridging individual freedoms.
The founders believed education was crucial to democracy. Here, a one-room schoolhouse in Breathitt County, Ky.
Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott/Library of Congress
Democracies degenerate because of cunning leaders. Democracies also crumble because of the people themselves – and the US founders believed education would be crucial to maintaining democracy.
‘Coal is poison’: protests against a proposed Chinese-backed coal power plant in Kenya.
Dai Kurokawa / EPA
A president’s persona is always a public act. In that way, Trump’s shtick – vulgar man of the people – was not exceptional. And every president has had to invent his version of the role.
A cartoonist’s image of Sen. Charles Sumner’s May 1856 beating by South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks.
Wikipedia
‘Mind your manners’ isn’t just something your mother told you. Manners – and civility – are an essential component of how things get done in government, and the Founding Fathers knew it.
President George Washington aimed to unify the country with his first Thanksgiving message.
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For his first presidential Thanksgiving, George Washington aimed to pull his country together in the face of the many internal divisions that could yank it apart.
Republican nominee Gov. Mike Pence and Democratic nominee Sen. Tim Kaine stand after the vice-presidential debate in Farmville, Va., Oct. 4, 2016.
Joe Raedle/Pool via AP
‘Mind your manners’ isn’t just something your mother told you. Manners – and civility – are an essential component of how things get done in government, and the Founding Fathers knew it.
Today’s genuine pessimism about America’s future has very old roots.
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Think American democracy is ending? You’re not alone, writes a historian. American leaders have often yielded to despair – as far back as the founding of the republic.
George Washington would have thought wearing a mask was manly.
National Portrait Gallery, Gilbert Stuart portrait/A. Papolu, illustration
A biographer of George Washington says that the father of the country would have no problem wearing the kind of protective gear that President Trump shuns.