Jefferson Refutes Charge of Treason (p442-p449)

(Setting:  Jefferson is on trial for treason against the country he founded.  He refutes the charge with a stirring account of the American greatness he fostered).

"Objection!", interrupted Jefferson. "I’m not in contempt of your court. I’m in contempt of you. I’m in contempt of anyone who purveys madness and irrationality. It gives root to mysticism, which grows like mental crabgrass to suffocate objective thought, paving the way for tyrants to seize the day. Irrationality breeds mysticism, and mysticism begets power. And then power nurtures both."

The Mad Hatter suddenly slumped into a dead faint from an apoplectic seizure. Having dispensed with this irritation, Jefferson faced the Head Honcho squarely to begin his defense. "You call me a traitor? What system of morality have I betrayed? Whom have I offended? Whom have I oppressed or killed? What on earth am I a traitor to?"

Without waiting for a response, he continued. "This trial will show that the first object of my heart is America, in which I have invested my life, my fortune, and my eternal spirit. I fathered this nation. I risked my life to nurture it, and my soul has watched over it through the decades as it flourished and then began to whither. I have never betrayed my precious creation. I’ve walked every step of the way with every true American. I was always there to transfuse love of liberty into them during some of history’s darkest moments.

"I was there inside every American's heart when Adolf Hitler and his Axis minions, who had conquered more land and people than Napoleon, Ghenghis Khan, and Julius Caesar, were sinking the planet into a totalitarian abyss. The world cowered in the shadow of a tyrant whose vision of life was silent printing presses, concentration camps, burning churches, and falling bombs. No bigger struggle was ever recorded than World War II, and no other nation than America could have conquered the pure evil of it.

"I wept the same frightened tears that mothers and wives wept on June 6th, 1944, when Eisenhower sent a half million courageous American men onto D-Day beaches code named Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold, and Juno in history’s largest invasion. Humanity held its breath that day, knowing the enormous consequences of the roiling conflict on those sandy strips of French soil turned into churning valleys of death. The sole hope of the planet rested on the Americans.

"The American-led triumph of freedom over totalitarianism was foreshadowed decades earlier by shot-putter Martin Sheridan, who was the flag-bearer for the American contingent in the London Olympics. It was customary for foreigners to dip their flags in deference to the host country’s ruler. But, when Sheridan passed the King of England in the stadium, he held the American flag even higher and snarled, "This flag dips to no earthly king!" This same defiant ritual was repeated by the American contingent when Hitler hosted the Berlin Olympics. This proud American defiance would later be all that stood between the Europeans and concentration camps.

"I stood with the exhausted workers on the Detroit assembly lines, as history’s most productive peacetime economy was converted into the Arsenal of Democracy to rescue the free world during World War II. While the bloodiest battles were waged with mortal vigor in Europe and Asia, a subtle yet more telling battle was waged by the irrepressible might of American capitalism in our factories. Rosie the Riveter was as much a hero as General Patton. Every morning, she left her children at home, overcame the gripping fear in her heart for the unknown fate of her husband on a distant battlefield, and put her back into building the planes and tanks that would eventually destroy the Axis powers. Ford Motor's Willow Run plant produced one B-24 Liberator every hour. While the dark thunderclouds of dictatorship threatened to extinguish the light of liberty across the planet, it was the lights burning late into the night in American factories that ultimately drove the satanic darkness of government run amok back into hell where it belongs.

"This wasn't the only time America saved the world from its cancerous governments and isms. American troops tipped the balance in the World War I episode of the eternal conflict between liberty and totalitarianism. In one battle, the advancing Germans forced the French troops out of strategic Belleau Wood. The recently arrived U.S. 2nd Division was ordered to plug this dangerous gap. As the battle continued, a French colonel advised the Americans to retreat from another German thrust. Marine Colonel Wendell Neville replied with words that defined the unconquerable American spirit, 'Retreat hell! We just got here!' This brave stand earned them the nickname 'Devil Dogs' and turned the tide in a war that had been a stalemated bottomless pit of casualties.

"When Paris was later liberated by the Allies, American troops were showered with flowers and wild kisses by French citizens in a celebration held on the 4th of July. Aware of this irony, General Pershing, the head of the American Expeditionary Forces reviewing the parades on a balcony of the Crillon Hotel, declared, 'Lafayette, we are here!', in homage to the French general who helped America win its own independence 150 years earlier. As I stood with Pershing on that balcony, I wept tears of gratitude for every GI who ever fell into a grave to free the rest of us from mankind's self-inflicted political monsters.

"I was there in Lake Placid when our hockey team defeated the Russian juggernaut in the most emotional athletic event ever witnessed. Though it was simply a contest of sport against our cold war nemesis, the struggle waged on the ice that day was a metaphor for decades of ideological confrontation between the two superpowers. Broadcaster Al Michaels screamed 'Do you believe in miracles?' at the end of the match, as America deliriously celebrated the stunning upset.

"During the next decade, Ronald Reagan stared down the Russian Bear by building up a military, strategic, and technological superiority. The resolve of America to maintain its inviolate capability to defend against the aggression of the Soviet Empire shattered the paper tiger facade of communism. Unable to match the fabulous power of capitalism to produce and innovate, and the power of individual liberty to inspire an unconquerable spirit, the USSR collapsed under the strain.

"When I stood at the Brandenburg Gate as the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain came tumbling down, I silently answered the prophetic question asked in Lake Placid a decade before. 'Yes, I do believe in miracles', I replied across the eternal continuum of time. I rejoiced as giddy East Germans and West Germans intermingled while dismantling the Wall, having suddenly escaped from the onerous shadow of humanity's greatest monument to slavery. 'Yes, I do believe in miracles', I repeated tearfully, never more aware than in that emotional moment of the incredible miracles that the American vision of individual liberty had inspired since July 4th, 1776.

"I walked alongside Abraham Lincoln as he steered the nation through a gut-wrenching Civil War. He not only held the union together, he brought completeness to the vision of American liberty. Eradicating the scourge of slavery removed the glaring contradiction of our revolution and affirmed my initial draft of the Declaration of Independence. The Great Emancipator reminded us, with his immortal Gettysburg Address, that we all are created equal and that all men are free. As I stared with Lincoln out over the desolate Gettysburg battlefield, where passionate men had fallen in defense of that sacred covenant, I shook with tormented agony at the bloodshed needed to make evident the simplest truth of the human condition. All men indeed are born free, not only from each other, but from myths and governments.

"I stood shoulder to shoulder with Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Bill Gates, and all of the other titans of American enterprise and inventiveness who had the daring and ambition to lead mankind through the Industrial and Information revolutions. These giants bequeathed to future generations an unrivaled economic engine of contagious wealth creation that fostered a magnificent new phenomenon called the middle class.

"These giants stood on a foundation of individual liberty, private property, and free markets. In just two centuries, this country rocketed from a sparsely populated subsistence economy to nearly 300 million citizens drawn from all corners of the globe, enjoying an economic miracle dwarfing all other attempts at general prosperity. Not only did we dazzle the world with unprecedented material abundance, we demonstrated the sheer joy of living. American music, television, movies, and other creative expressions of our unfettered intellect wowed the world with a kaleidoscopic cultural display.

"By the mid-20^th Century, our magnificent productivity and creativity sculpted a world that was essentially an American one. But unlike other empires, this American hegemony was not manifested by forced occupation of foreign territories. Instead, it was manifested by the sheer power of a vision whose time had come, by a determined people exemplifying the power of individual liberty and the potential of life freed from oppressive governments. We didn’t send soldiers as the pillaging vanguard of American domination. Rather, we sent abroad an example of human felicity derived from freedom, with Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America as our ideological beacons piercing the desolate skies of totalitarianism.

"In view of all this, I stand here with unequivocal pride at what my philosophical precepts engendered on those hot July days in the old Philadelphia State House back in 1776. America was no longer just an ideal etched on the Declaration of Independence, it was a magnificent reality that rendered the empires of Greece, Rome, and Britain small, profane, and spiritless by comparison.

"Then there was that magic moment in 1969 when Neil Armstrong, an American from Wapakoneta, stepped noiselessly onto the dusty soil of another celestial body, giving life to the most enduring fantasy of our species. We flew through the cosmos and etched our American autograph for all time across the heavens. I watched this epic drama unfold on live television, as another product of our incomparable technology settled on the Moon’s surface with only 20 seconds of fuel left, after a desperate, daring, and therefore consummately American search for a clear place to land.

"I’ll never forget the surge of pride and relief coursing through my arteries as Armstrong's voice crackled across a quarter million miles of space, declaring to eternity, 'Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.' Yes, the American Eagle had landed. Then the hatch to the lunar module opened. Armstrong stepped down the ladder and fulfilled an impossible dream by planting his foot onto the moon. 'One small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind', were his timeless words, generously including everyone else in this American triumph.

"Armstrong planted the American flag into the Moon’s virgin soil, not as an act of conquest, but as a statement of supreme purpose and genius that fittingly reached across 200 years and 250,000 miles into the restless spirits of those who had the courage and the vision to father the American nation. My own spirit soared higher than those intrepid astronauts. Tears streamed down my cheeks and strangers around me hugged each other out of the sheer joy of being an American. For a special moment in time, we were starkly aware of the staggering greatness humans were capable of.

"I trembled at the awesomeness of a seemingly impossible Earthrise glowing blue-green against the dark silhouetted rim of the moon. It wasn’t just the awesomeness of our technology, our spirit, and our daring that moved me, it was the awesomeness of what this nation has meant to the world for two centuries. If America had never existed, what would the world be like today? My mind quickly abandons the despairing proposition

"A thousand years from now, people will look back on this achievement as the finest of our species. We matured from worshipping gods to being gods, from staring in wonder at lightning to creating our own magnificent lightning strike across the heavens. No longer bound by terrestrial limitations or by the ball and chain of our primitive mythologies, we achieved a fundamental spatial and spiritual liberation. The Egyptians created the Great Pyramids. The Chinese created the Great Wall. The Romans created their great networks of roads. But with this adventure to the moon, we Americans created something more enduring and magnificent than all the other world wonders combined.

"Since the moon exists in an airless void, Armstrong's footprints will remain undisturbed for a long, long time. It would be unforgivable if evidence of American greatness on the moon outlasted evidence here on Earth. This impending irony conjures despondence out of joy. Our dream is now crumbling around us as we descend into the hellhole of government run amok. Our greatness is evaporating into ignominy. Bill Clinton is replacing Abraham Lincoln as the epitome of our national character."