In September 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to his friend James Madison back in Virginia. Jefferson was in Paris in the early phases of the French Revolution, and he wrote one of the strangest letters in the Jefferson cannon. One that has sparked lots of controversy over the years. Its recipient, James Madison, thought this letter was absolutely nuts. And let me tell you about it, and I want you to think about it. This is all about generations. My big theme this evening will be Jefferson's idea of what a generation is and why that's important for the future of republican government. This idea of generation is one I'm gonna develop as Jefferson thought his way through the challenges to the new republic, and the big challenge is this: How do you sustain the revolutionary spirit? For Jefferson, July 4th, 1776 was the crucial date in world history. That's a sort of a self-aggrandizing notion of world history, but he thought, as we used to say about 9/11, that July 4th changed everything. But maybe the thing that had changed the destruction of the old imperial regime in America marking the moment of progress in world history toward a better, brighter tomorrow and eventually all the dominoes would fall across the world, and we would achieve the republican millennium. Well, maybe we wouldn't. How can we sustain the spirit? How did these Anglo-Americans at that moment discover in themselves, that love of liberty, that willingness to make great sacrifices that led to the success of the independence project? Jefferson understands that things are happening in France that maybe this makes the American Revolution look different. Maybe this is the real mark, the real indication, that everything is changing. All right, I've got you all excited. This is Jefferson's letter and what he does in this letter to Madison is to explain how it is that every generation, every generation has a claim to rule itself because the Earth belongs in usufruct to the living. Well everything makes sense there I'm sure to you except for the usufruct business and that's a Roman law term, and it's critical to what Jefferson was telling us. There's something utterly banal about the thought that well, we make rules for ourselves. This is a democracy. This is our right as a people to determine our own destiny. Oh, that's easy to say, but what does it mean in fact? And what does it mean that every generation, as Jefferson tells us in this letter, is like an independent nation with respect to every other generation? This, I think, is the most extraordinary claim that Jefferson's making in this letter. He's in effect telling us, and I'm sure you young people have felt this when you encounter your parents, that you come from now you say not a different nation but from a different planet. You feel different. We aging hippies from the 60s feel like we were a kind of nation, a generation. This notion that generations are marked by decades is very much an American obsession. Well, when you think about it does it make any sense at all that there is such a thing as a generation? And why should we worry about it? Now, Jefferson is very anal. He loves numbers and this letter is a exercise in number crunching. Now, among the fascinating things you might read in 1789 were mortality tables that had been assembled in France. There were none others available, at least to Jefferson, in the world, but he knew how old people were when they died. Now I want you to suspend disbelief and take this little mathematical trip with me, and we'll talk about how Jefferson comes up with a definition of a generation. Now I've been told by my producers, I should announce in advance what the big payoff is gonna be, to keep you glued to your seats and on the edge of them if that's not a contradiction in terms. And this is what I plan to do today. I'm going to lay out the ideas of this letter, and they focus on two main themes. One is debt. Keep that in mind, it's a present day concern of some magnitude. Debt, both public debt is what he's talking about, but we know, for a man who died $100,000 in debt, when that really meant something, $100.000 was a lot of money, that his private indebtedness was a major concern as well. He moves from a discussion of debt to a discussion of constitutions. You won't see immediately the connection between the two, but it's important to Jefferson and I will give you the punchline then we'll go back and fill in the blanks. And that is every 19 years, I'm gonna tell you why 19 years, every 19 years there should be a sunset provision in any statute or law which suggests that it will cease to operate any financial obligations entailed by that law will have been resolved. It's what we call in 19th century constitutions, pay as you go. And that is, we will not leave accumulating and enlarging and engorged tax burdens or debt burdens on succeeding generations. Because of course, that means that we, who enjoyed the benefit of the borrowing will impose the cost on you young people. We will have deprived you of your liberty, and this is my big audio visual aid today, this and this other one, these are the dead hands of the past, choking you from the grave. When I'm gone when I have lived high, wide and handsome on my social security and you are left entirely impoverished, this will hit home with you. We've got debt every 19 years we get to back then we also have constitutions. I want you to put yourself in James Madison's place. We know who James Madison is. He's the father of The Constitution. He agonized, and was still agonizing, had just gotten the Bill of Rights enacted by the First Federal Congress. Madison does not want to hear what Jefferson is saying, which is we need a new Constitution every 19 years. Every 19 years? No, says Madison, and he explains at some length why this is such a silly idea. But let's articulate that idea first, explain Jefferson's logic, and my big claim to you is that it's not quite as silly as it sounds. There is, I think, a deeper truth in what Jefferson is telling us and it is about generations and their proper relationship to each other. Well, how do we get to 19 years? I told you about those fascinating mortality tables. If you have a majority at a given moment, this is important, bare with me. Let's say all of us now constitute, we're all alive presumably, and we come to some decision by the mother principle of republic and government, which is majority rule. So fifty one of the hundred people here, the majority, make a law, come to a decision. How long should that law be good? Well, I'll tell you how we determine this. When half of the people who are now here are dead that would be me and a few of the old people here soon, but as the years go on more and more of you will be dead and less than half of you will be alive at some point. At that point, that would be 19 years, as Jefferson calculates it. That is within 19 years, according to mortality tables, half of the people alive now will be dead. Half of the people who made these decisions. Are you with me? Does that make some sense? Now, you say what a desperate effort to define a cohort or a generation Why is he doing this, and what is the implication? [MUSIC]
