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Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation.

Jon Meacham

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Jon Meacham
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 20
Biographer
Editor
Editor-In-Chief
Historian
Journalist
Chattanooga
Tennessee
Jon Ellis Meacham
Common
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Failed
America
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Even
Gun
Whenever
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America has long raised political and cultural cognitive dissonance to an art form. We are capable of living with enormous inequality and injustice while convincing ourselves that we are in fact moving toward what Churchill called the broad, sun-lit uplands.
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The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths - of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism.
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As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs.
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Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer, fairer and cleaner, 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.
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Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.
Jon Meacham
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Barack Obama is many things among them, he is a tough and even ferocious political warrior.
Jon Meacham
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Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.
Jon Meacham
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I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt's, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans - but he was also a cold-blooded politician.
Jon Meacham
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I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.
Jon Meacham
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I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously, and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity, if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church.
Jon Meacham
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If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.
Jon Meacham
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The way to put oneself in a position to take the harder, more honorable political path is to argue for one's virtues in a vigorous way.
Jon Meacham
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Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.
Jon Meacham
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One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting - not well I am a terrible shot - quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the Tennessee River.
Jon Meacham
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An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and we have a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing and illuminating, this new biography will endure.
Jon Meacham
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Anyone weighing whether to re-elect the President should take the bin Laden operation into account: it is a powerful exhibit that Obama is a steely Commander in Chief - a critical test for many Americans.
Jon Meacham
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I've been accused of being old before my time more than once. It's true that I've always felt an affinity for, and been comfortable around, older people. I attribute this to a childhood spent around my grandparents - and even a great-grandparent or two. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.
Jon Meacham
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From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.
Jon Meacham
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An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.
Jon Meacham
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No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.
Jon Meacham