Young America’s Freedom: A Sherman Statement
About all I have to say today, I said in this column at The American Spectator:
As much as the American book-buying public has shown deep interest in the superstars of the nation’s founding period, too little attention has been paid to some of the other legislative workhorses and statesmen of the period, and too few lessons thus learned from their examples. As we celebrate Independence Day on Monday, we should move beyond the famous Jefferson-Adams-Franklin troika, in order to marvel at the great decades of public service of the two other members of the committee charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence.
Those two were Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert R. Livingston of New York — and they were no mere window-dressing on the committee, much less in public life…. what’s instructive is that the disparate backgrounds of the other two, Sherman and Livingston, demonstrate the wonderful meritocracy and social mobility that existed, even then, in the bustling New World…. [Looking at the scope of their careers,] they give the lie to the now-fashionable notion that there is something inherently wrong or suspicious about holding public office for many years. Long service is not necessarily corrupting. Conversely, being new to the political scene is not necessarily a virtue.
Again, read all about it here. Happy Independence Day!
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