I think one of the most interesting things I took from Jill Lepore\u2019s People Power was the point on democracy\u2019s transformation from \u201cunutterably bad to unassailably good\u201d in the minds of Americans and people around the world. I took two things from this, as a historian it hit home the lesson of contextualizing sources in the proper time period because Jefferson and Jackson were fighting against traditional norms and their plans to expand democracy to \u201ceveryone\u201d had no historical precedent. From our society and the values we\u2019ve been given I think many people would say, oh yes, that\u2019s normal, everyone wants democracy. But what Jefferson did and Jackson did were not the same. Imagine if you will, someone today arguing for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in America. What would your response to that be? What would the people\u2019s response to that be? While I\u2019ll leave the debate concerning the causes of democracy\u2019s eventual triumph to Mr. Webster and his colleagues, I think triumph itself, given the challenges it faced, shows how strange this time period in America was and sheds a different light on the men and women who helped push the limits of democracy that we should take into account when reading primary sources written by these men and women. The second point was that I found Noah Webster fascinating. While I take issue with some of his points, I believe honest men can arise in equal measure from the aristocracy and his so called \u201cknaves and fools,\u201d his points on democracy becoming an \u201cunquestionable truth\u201d ring more true today than they did then. On a personal level, I feel that quest to improve the American government has stalled a bit in our present age because of an unwillingness to question and probe its faults because we have been bound by tradition of our democracy. If there\u2019s a lesson to be learned from Tomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, it\u2019s that sometimes breaking tradition can lead to something better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think one of the most interesting things I took from Jill Lepore\u2019s People Power was the point on democracy\u2019s transformation from \u201cunutterably bad to unassailably good\u201d in the minds of Americans and people around the world. I took two things from this, as a historian it hit home the lesson of contextualizing sources in … <\/p>\n

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