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Dining With Jeff (Bill Moyers misquoted James Watt)
NY Times ^ | June 25, 2005 | PATRICIA NELSON LIMERICK

Posted on 06/24/2005 9:55:08 PM PDT by neverdem

Boulder, Colo.

Founding a democracy, rather like living in a democracy, can be very tough on friendship.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson began as friends. The tensions and frictions of the early Republic took care of that. Then, after years of silence between them, a mutual friend persuaded them to write to each other. In 1812, they launched into a correspondence that continued until it was ended by their deaths.

That ending point was on their minds and drove their correspondence. As Mr. Adams wrote Mr. Jefferson, "You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to each other."

I fell in love with this quotation 30 years ago, about the same time that I fell in love with Jeff Limerick, and for some of the same reasons. Honest, self-aware and articulate, Jeff made "explaining himself" into an art form, but his performance soared past his fellow mortals when it came to the tougher side of this transaction. Jeff had a genius for listening and giving people the best opportunity to explain themselves and to become his friend.

On Feb. 1, 2005, Jeff died of a stroke. Having trained with a master, I carry on with the methods I learned from him.

When I find myself puzzled and even vexed by the opinions and beliefs of other people, I invite them to have lunch. Multiple experiments have supported what we will call, in Jeff's honor, the Limerick Hypothesis: in the bitter contests of values and political rhetoric that characterize our times, 90 percent of the uproar is noise, and 10 percent is what the scientists call "signal," or solid, substantive information that will reward study and interpretation. If we could eliminate much of the noise, we might find that the actual, meaningful disagreements are on a scale...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: District of Columbia; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: adams; billmoyers; jefferson; johnadams; misquotes; moyers; pbs; reagan; ronaldwilsonreagan; thomasjefferson

1 posted on 06/24/2005 9:55:10 PM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem
[ Founding a democracy, rather like living in a democracy, can be very tough on friendship. ]

America is not a democracy..
Calling America a democracy is agitprop and disinformation..
Perpetrated by traitors or the ignorant..

2 posted on 06/24/2005 10:05:58 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been ok'ed me to included some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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To: neverdem

I thought the quote was going to be the joke he told to Pat Boone.


3 posted on 06/24/2005 10:50:40 PM PDT by HAL9000 (Get a Mac - The Ultimate FReeping Machine)
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