The American Spectator

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(Page 4 of 17)

Mr. Lawrence Henry's recollection of his grandmother ought to remind all of how near we are to our nation's Founders, and how young our nation is.

My own paternal grandmother passed away just two years ago. She was lucid and sharp until nearly the end. I made a simple reckoning (I Did The Math) and understood thereby that had she, as a girl, encountered a man of the same age she was when she passed, why, that man could have had a conversation (as a lad) with...Thomas Jefferson.

Imagine that. I'm only 57, and yet my grandma could have said, "Paulie, this guy told me that Tom Jefferson had said to him..."

p>Kind of makes you think. Our American community of souls is pretty darn tight. br> -- Paul Kotik br> Plantation, Florida /p> p> Lawrence Henry replies: br> In Samuel Eliot Morison's single-volume history of the United States, he tells about hearing a story from his history teacher when he was a boy near the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century. That teacher, an old man, had in turn had a teacher who was a participant in the Constitutional convention. What he told him was a joke that circulated at the convention: /p>

"A standing army is like a standing member. It can insure domestic tranquility, but can also lead to foreign adventures."

p> IN THE SWING OF THINGS

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