The emphasis on the civil character of our political leaders, and indeed on the civil character of citizens in general, strikes right to the core of 18th and 19th century thought about the vitality of republican government. This emphasis has been part of the political tradition of our country since its inception, and continues to be vibrant among at least one important group of politically active Americans today. The phenomena is much broader in our country than simply a focus on the founders--or to put that slightly differently, the focus on the character of the founders is part of a much larger public concern about character in general. The questions that historians find interesting to ask, and that other historians find interesting to read, are always connected to the questions that stimulate the larger society of which they are part. In classic republican thinking, of which Jefferson was most definitely aware, a public order premised on popular sovereignty can only remain stable, orderly, and decent so long as the citizens possess the right character. Democracies inevitably threaten to devolve into factions. Factions produce demogogues, who seize power for their own self-interested ends, subvert the polity, and ultimately produce tyrannies. This is one form of what John Pocock refers to as the "Machievellian Moment." Republics die. The question in front of statesmen is how to prolong the vitality and health of a republican polity for as long as possible. Jefferson's answers to that question are complexly grounded in earlier political thought. He condemned economic dependence, urban life in general, and life time wage work. Like many Virginians, he saw land ownership as vital to sustaining good character. His thought was also shaped in part by his rejection of Augustinian Protestant pessimism about human potential. For Jefferson, average, typical people were not irrevocably tainted by original sin. Landed independence and the responsibilities that naturally accompanied it would condition people to good character and prepare men to be good, vigilant citizens. Proper education would prepare the best of them to be good statesmen. Many of the contemporary concerns of the religious right and their allies share this broad Jeffersonian concern. Jefferson was somewhere along the unitarian/socinian/deist spectrum, a rationalist in his religious life. The wing of the Republican party that today worries about American character is influenced by evangelical Protestantism. So in that sense Senator Allen parts company with Jefferson. But the broader concern that the character of individual citizens is deeply related to the vitality of republican self-government is something that many contemporary conservatives and Jefferson share. Read, for example, Robert Bork's SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH, and compare the rhetoric there to the classic republicanism that Pocock describes. The parallels are striking. I find it quite astounding that the most vibrant heirs to the Jeffersonian tradition I describe above are evangelical Protestants. I don't hear the same concerns for civic character from libertarian conservatives, which is to be expected. But I don't hear it either from the various constituencies of the Democratic party. Anyone who has read Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" Inaugural Address of 1941 can see the concern for civic character of an earlier generation of progressives. But today's progressives do not bother to ask the question that Jefferson asked, that worried Roosevelt, and that Bork, in his own polemical fashion, expresses. So if Allen and others like him appropriate Jefferson successfully, its because progressives have ceased to care about questions that certainly animated Jefferson himself. Warm regards, Kevin Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D. Department of History James Madison University To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html