How many generations did it take?
Well I'll leave that for you historians and mathematicians to figure out.
Ten, 15 something like that.
But Jefferson's not really, literally talking about a piece
of land for each one of you in each generation.
Instead he's talking about the immortality, the perpetuity of the nation.
This to me is the key idea.
That is, we become a nation because
of the relationship between and among generations.
Each one of us stands in this historic flow of time, looking backward
at our fathers with gratitude and love, let that be a warning to you.
Looking forward to the future to provide for the rising generation.
This notion that your role in world history is not simply to avoid
taxes, to get rid of the British king, but is instead to create
a new kind of republic, a nation that enjoys immortal life.
What a consolation the idea of the nation is because we
will, after all, die We will all die.
And Jefferson knows this.
It doesn't happen for a long time with Jefferson, but he has lots of death in
his own family, and it's the ordinary experience
of Americans and people all over the world.
But what a consolation if instead of the usual religious promise of
everlasting life, of salvation if you will, if you will adhere faithfully to
the prescriptions of your particular faith, if instead, you can imagine
yourself as part of a community, right here on Earth, that will live forever.
Democracy for Jefferson, and beginning with these simple ideas
about how you need to provide for the next generation.
A democracy gives rise to this kind of secular,
terrestrial immortality, and that's the modern idea of the nation.
And that's what Jefferson anticipates.
And it's in that idea of the nation and the attachments that we
all feel to each other, at least now, since you've heard me give this
lecture, it's, the, through those attachments, and
with that idea of the nation, that
we can transcend ourselves, and imagine a
glorious future for all of us collectively.
Democracy then is not simply a way we make
decisions now, it's the way we sustain ourselves across time.
Now constitutions, this is what Madison got very upset
about, we really have to write a new constitution?
Well this is the major concern for Jefferson.