In the same year, 1787, in regard to what is known as Shays’ Rebellion, he wrote another friend, “God forbid that we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.”  A lack of rebelliousness among the people would demonstrate “a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. . . . And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

The “rebellion” in Massachusetts had alarmed many, especially the masters of that commonwealth, who were imbued with a Puritan longing for regulated behavior and saw the tax revolt of Capt. Daniel Shays and his farmers as a threat to their control.  In Jefferson’s perspective, the “rebels” were merely adhering to good American practice.  What, indeed, had the recent War of Independence amounted to but resistance to heavy-handed government?  And such rebellions against unsatisfactory government officials and policies had been a regular occurrence during the long colonial history of the Americans, especially in the Southern colonies.

Persistent misrepresentation of Jefferson’s words here and elsewhere by later generations has obscured what he meant.  A dangerous radical?  A chronic upsetter of social order?  No.  Jefferson does not call for an overturn of society and its reconstruction according to some abstract plan.  Think of the root meaning of the term revolution.  Jefferson, in fact, is mostly satisfied with his society (Virginia), although he is interested in a few small reforms that might broaden its base.  So are his followers satisfied with their portions of America.  That is why they support him.  Despite the hysterical and sometimes insincere denunciations of the New England clergy, the Virginia planter is no Jacobin.  As he sees things, any government, with the passage of time and the accretion of abuses and bad precedents, becomes corrupted.  It needs to be revolved back to its original principles.

This is not a radical program but a deeply reactionary one.  What Jefferson fundamentally wants to tell us is that the people should never fear the government, but the government should always fear the people.  This is not the battle cry of a movement with a radical agenda.  President Jefferson comes to the White House with no agenda except to preserve the joint independence of the States United and their separate rights as “the best bulwark of our liberties.”  To carry out this agenda requires a rollback of the economic and judicial corruptions introduced by the Hamilton/Adams innovators.

For the Jeffersonian democrats, Americans were fortunate to enjoy widespread property ownership, with a large body of independent citizens, and to be free of the class hegemony and conflict of the Old World, thankfully an ocean away.  There is no French or Russian revolutionary fantasy here.  The government is not to be used as a sledgehammer to destroy and rebuild society.  In this way of thinking, the greatest enemy of society and of individual liberty is government itself.  The tendency of power is everywhere and forever toward concentration.  As a popular Jeffersonian saying has it, “Power is always stealing from the many to the few.”

It is this basic orientation that separates Jeffersonian democrats from “conservatives” of Jefferson’s own time and later.  It explains the curious phenomenon that throughout American history the people have been “conservative,” and revolutionary changes have always come from the top down.

My point is illuminated by the argument between John Adams in his A Defense of the Constitutions of the United States and John Taylor of Caroline, the systematic philosopher of Jeffersonian democracy, in his Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated.  Adams’ view of history was that the popular majority always had a tendency to envy the wealth of its betters and use the government to appropriate it, and that this tendency was the chief source of destruction of a free regime.

He hoped to avoid the subversion of American republicanism by various devices that would dilute and delay an unwise popular majority: a bicameral legislature with an upper house remote from popular opinion, an executive veto, and an independent judiciary.  All Adams’ devices have catastrophically failed to limit government and to preserve freedom, as Taylor plainly predicted.

For Taylor, Adams had got his history wrong.  The people, in a society like that of Americans, were not dangerous.  Most of the time they went quietly about their own business and demanded nothing—unless they were intolerably provoked by abuses of government.  It was the “court party” that was the enemy of liberty and that would subvert the free commonwealth.  History showed that there were always self-seeking minorities, would-be elites, ready to use the machinery of government to live off the labor of the majority.  Sometimes this was done by force, and sometimes by fraud, as in the Hamiltonian maxim “a public debt is a public blessing.”  The remedy was not to erect artificial “checks and balances” but to make sure power was widely dispersed, limited, and amenable to recall.

The Jeffersonian Constitution has been misrepresented as much as or more than Jeffersonian philosophy.  It was not “strict construction,” a nonstarter, nor even states’ rights.  It was state sovereignty.  Jefferson (and Madison, too) may be quoted ad infinitum to this effect.  The Virginia and Kentucky documents of 1798-1800 spell out beyond any doubt that the final defense of freedom in the American system is the people acting in their only constitution-making identity, that of their sovereign states.  The states were the legitimate and peaceful resort to protect the liberties of their citizens and themselves as communities from federal encroachment.

Years after leaving the White House, Jefferson writes to an inquisitive foreigner,

But the true barriers of our liberty in this country are our State governments; and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man, is that of which our Revolution and present government found us possessed.  Seventeen distinct States, amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns, but single and independent as to their internal administration.

In the last months of his life Jefferson suggested to influential Virginians that it was time once again to consider interposing the sovereignty of the state against unconstitutional federal legislation.  Never for a day in his life did Jefferson doubt that the people of a state could exercise their sovereignty by leaving the Union, though it was not something to be encouraged rashly.  He rather expected that the expanding country would break up into two or more confederacies.  That was fine, if it was what the people wanted.  Americans were rightly joined together by fellow feeling—shared blood and sacrifice—not by the armed force of Washington City.

Commentators have twisted themselves into incredible acrobatic postures and wholesaled semiplausible lies to assert that Jefferson did not really mean the plain language of what he said.  Others have “explained” that Jeffersonian states’ rights was only a temporary and expedient device to defend liberty, a device now made unnecessary by the establishment of the American Civil Liberties Union.  They miss the point, unwelcome to all adherents of elitist agendas and centralized power—for Jefferson, individual liberty and state sovereignty were indivisible.  Properly rebellious free men defended themselves and their communities from Leviathan.

The eclipse of the Jeffersonian preference for limited power and economic freedom had less to do with politics than it did with changes in the spirit of society as the 19th century progressed.  Almost from the first days of the United States, New England leadership undertook to establish the New England way as the true and only American way.  This was carried out in politics, religion, education, literature, historical writing, and even in lexicography, with vigor and persistence.  This is a subject worthy of a multivolume study of a phenomenon that is unrecognized today, although it was a decisive event in our history and clearly understood while it was taking place.  Louis Auchincloss, in The Winthrop Covenant, gives a surface account of the persistence of this Puritan mission throughout American history.

The Puritan conquest of the North was not as easy as has been thought, but was accomplished by about 1850.  James Fenimore Cooper in his Littlepage trilogy describes and laments how the unique Anglo-Dutch society of old New York was transformed by the swarm of immigrants from east of the Hudson.  Meanwhile, Emerson went to Europe and absorbed the Germanized version of the French Revolution, which was really just going back to his Puritan roots.  He came home a Unitarian.  The mission was changed, but the intensity of the need to correct the world to conform to the New England plan remained the same.  It soon brought to heel the West and the unruly Catholic immigrants.

The South was a different matter.  It had developed from a different base and in a different way.  Southerners were proud and determined to do it their way, individually and as a people.  The South could not be converted or subverted, so it had to be destroyed, the grapes of wrath had to be trampled out.  A 30-year campaign of slander and hatred, combined with economic developments, finally brought on in 1861 the circumstances in which this could be accomplished.  Americans like to think that their campaign for the abolition of slavery was all about benevolence and liberty.  A bit of genuine historical research into what they actually said at the time paints a different picture.  The Yankees hated slavery because the slaves were a non-Anglo-Saxon element who had, in their view, hopelessly corrupted white Southerners.  In the slaveholding society, white men had far too much liberty and independent power.  Such liberty offended puritan sensibilities and created an evil disposition to thwart New England economic and cultural hegemony.  It was not that the black man had too little liberty; it was that the Southern white man had far too much.

That crusade pretty well finished off Jeffersonian democracy.  As Gen. R.E. Lee wrote to Lord Acton the year after his surrender, “the consolidation of the States into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home,” was the precursor of American ruin.  Lincoln rightly remains the truly representative American.  He is the symbol of the highly successful synthesis of capitalist oligarchy, puritan conformity, and perpetual social revolution from the top down that is the mainstream of American life.  There are many who find that synthesis beautiful, though most often they do not really understand what it is, identifying with one or another of the elements and not with the combination itself.  Money rules and permits a politics that consists almost entirely of sham battles between the old puritans, the “conservatives,” and the secular ones, the “liberals.”  From time to time they all join together in a messianic war to destroy the latest menace to Lincoln’s vision: the South, the kaiser, the Red Menace, drugs, terror, etc.

They share the sense that the meaning of “America” is a mission to bring the abstract ideals of the American standard to all mankind.  The only difference is that the “conservatives” want to do it by force, and the “liberals” by welfare.  A Jeffersonian, if any still existed, would insist that Americans are not here to be used for anybody’s mission, and the proper point of reference is what is good for them.

The Jeffersonian spirit survived for a while underground, and now and then a weak and confused revival occurred, as in the days of William Jennings Bryan and populism.  The last significant appearance was perhaps the agrarian, non-Marxist critique of capitalism in the 1930’s.  Nowhere to be seen now are the old Jeffersonians, once a major American type, rebellious men who dared defend the rights of themselves and their communities from outside impositions.  But buried somewhere deep in the American soul is a tiny ember of Jeffersonian democracy that now and then gives off an uncertain, feeble, and futile spark.

Clyde Wilson proudly reports that one of his ancestors took part in Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676.

This article first appeared in the November 2011 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

According to Salon, 67 per cent of the supporters of the movement come from the South. They also hint darkly that the teenage level percentages of "Tea Party" support that come from the Midwest and West are probably people cursed with Southern blood in their family tree. (This is probably true. It is also likely that some of the adherents in the South are Rust Belt refugees.)

For readers of Salon, the fact itself is decisive and conclusive. Whatever comes from the South, in this case populist resentment of the federal government, is beyond redemption by being identified as Southern. They can count on a good part of the public to react on cue with the same automatic hostility and disdain.

What Salon reports neither surprises nor frightens folks down this way. Every populist movement in American history has come from the South. There is no other kind. In America, anti-government populist movements are always conservative—they look back to a past better time and they have a Jeffersonian suspicion of government. The South is the only part of the country that has a historical memory that goes back more than a week and that still contains something of original American feeling.

However, Salonites need not worry. People's movements in this country are invariably taken over by slick operators from above the Potomac and Ohio who turn them into commercial ventures. (This happened to the campaign that grew around Judge Roy Moore of Alabama for his stand against federal obliteration of the Ten Commandments.)

Speaking of numbers, it is reported that after the recent carnival in the federal city, the public approval of Congress has fallen from 27% to 14%. The only thing curious about this is—Who are those 14%? My guess is people who keep sports channels turned on all the time. The number of people, mostly Chronicles readers, who are intelligent enough to know that party conflicts are meaningless for the fate of our country are to few to show up in the numbers.

Let’s suppose it is true what they say about Mr. King. Should we not change the name of Washington State, which is, after all, also named after a racist slaveholder? Should we change it to Lincoln? But, alas, dear readers, Lincoln was a confirmed racial bigot (like everybody else at the time), so that won’t work either. It is going to be hard to find any prominent person in earlier American history who was not a racist by 21st century standards. The State of Mandela? The State of Obama? The unwelcome fact is that almost all white Americans well into the 20th century were white supremacists. And in the 18th and 19th centuries slaveholding was widespread and commonplace.

Actually, the original Mr. King was not, I think, a particularly bad fellow for his time. A congressman from North Carolina, Senator from Alabama, U.S. Minister to France, and apparently quite a learned man for a politician at that time (not to mention THESE TIMES). Curiously, he was elected Vice-President on the ticket with Franklin Pierce, but died before being sworn in. There was no Vice-President for four years, and nobody seemed to mind.

I doubt if the people of Washington State outside Seattle are quite as excitable or as addicted to profitable victimology as the big-city folks, but I have to tell them that they have at least five other counties named for slaveholders, and who knows how many named for racial bigots. Their Left Coast neighbours in Oregon have them beat, with, at my count, eight. Of course, the names of counties simply tell us what part of the country prominent national figures at the time came from, especially those prominent national figures who were friendly to the settlement of the West. I doubt that there are any politicians and not many professors out there these days who can identify the counties I mean, and I ain't about to tell them.

And speaking of county names, the Midwestern States, especially Illinois and Michigan, are even more egregious offenders than the Pacific ones. But I ain't telling about that either.

Once I was present at a talk by a venerable and quite celebrated historian, who made a few remarks about the undesirable changes being made in our country by the flood of immigrants.  It was not two minutes into the talk before the assembled professors, including those on the platform behind the speaker, began to murmur disapproval, which grew until the speaker had to stop.  This was a not particularly radical group.  Of course, few of them knew enough about their supposed field of study to recognise the scholarly stature of the speaker since it was not recent and fashionable.

***

I frequently get phone calls, sometimes live and sometimes canned, tempting me into a dialogue that leads to buying some candidate or other dubious product.  Why do these people who want South Carolinians to vote for them hire phone solicitors who speak in a rapid,  almost unintelligible Valley speak, sometimes prissy sounding males?  Or even worse, Hindoo singsong?   I am surely not the only person who is immediately repulsed.

***

How do politicians, judges, corporate moguls, media talking heads, generals, and college presidents manage to be completely free of any sense of shame?   Surely some of them had mothers who taught them that lying, stealing, perversion, and dirty tricks on other people were not good.

***

It was recently stated in my favourite journal that official Catholic charities receive three-fourths of their funds, a billion dollars per year, from the U.S. government.  When and where did this kind of thing become routine?  (Probably under that great statesman Bush Minor.)   In a regime in which a little prayer in a schoolroom or at a ballgame is a violation of church/state separation?  I venture that the very same people support both the government's absorption of the church and the government's suppression of Christianity.

***

Every time an election nears, the Republicans begin to blast "Democratic policies" like big spending, affirmative action, abortion, open borders, needless wars, bad judges, etc—all policies fostered in some way or other by Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the two Bushes.  Bush's wars and Bush's budgetary disaster are already being treated as if Obama caused them.  Why does the Republican ploy always seem to work?  It is a mystery.  The answer, centering on the intellectual inferiority and moral immaturity of the Republican voter, is almost too horrible to contemplate.

***

Why have Americans of the last several generations lost all ability to recognise age-old truths?  Like the richer the government, the poorer the people?  In this case, I think it has something to do with the fact that people of hereditary wealth now make the decisions about government spending, and they like to be generous—with other people's money.  They have no idea that acting an unwilling Lord Bountiful to the taxpayer may actually be a sacrifice for most people.

***

Why was a presidential wannabe recently attacked for saying that the black family is less sound today than it was under slavery, a demonstrably true statement, and praised for saying that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery, a demonstrably false statement?  What does this tell us about the state of public discourse in the U.S.?

***

Why do European elites seem to be just as enthusiastic for limitless immigration, affirmative action, and multiculturalism as American elites?  When the Europeans, unlike the American rulers, actually have a civilisation to keep?

***

Why do the very same people who get in a moral dudgeon over Thomas Jefferson’s presumed sex life wink indulgently at Jack Kennedy’s and Bill Clinton’s satyriasis?

***

How many books has George W. Bush read since leaving the White House?  OK, let’s be fair.  How many pages has George W. Bush read since he left the White House?

***

If Obama had been at the Constitutional Convention, what State would he have represented?

Democratic Elections: When the rulers permit the voters to keep on voting until they get it right.

Elder Statesman: A former office-holder who receives big bucks from foreign governments and corporations to sell out his country.

Democratic Party: An organisation which used to represent American workers and farmers and now represents all the degenerate elements of society, giving it a certainty of unlimited growth.

Republican Party: A long-running con game by which politicians get power by pretending to represent the interests and values of the middle class.  The game has seldom failed to work in a century and a half.

Patriot: Someone who wants working-class American women and men to be killed in foreign military expeditions so he can feel good about being “American” (whatever that may mean).

American: Any person who resides in the United States or does not reside in the United States but wishes to do so.  Resident American males are often known as sports fans, females as mall shoppers, and others as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered.

America: Specifically, the continent or continents between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  “America” is often also used to evoke a cluster of mythological, ideological, and sentimental emotions reflecting an aggressive belief that the United States is a superior and especially virtuous country, unique in history.

Democratic Health Policy: Providing the best available free medical care to wastrels and illegal aliens while bankrupting productive citizens who experience a serious illness.

Democratic Economic Policy: Guaranteeing that the biggest bankers are reimbursed for lost profits and that the present generation can spend all it wants and pass on the debt to future generations.

Democratic Legislation: When judges throw out laws they don't like and pass new ones they like better.  (This is a feature unique to "America" and much celebrated by lovers of democracy.)

Democratic Administration: Carrying out policies desired by those who can provide the most money, votes, and favourable publicity to Congresspersons.

Democratic Immigration Policy: Replacing the native population and their posterity with foreigners and their posterity.  (Wait a minute.  The people oppose this policy by a margin of eight to one.  There must be something else going on here besides democracy.)

Democratic Social Policy: Guaranteeing that when programs fail they will receive increased funding so that the federal employees and money recipients who enjoy them will not face any loss of living standards or necessity to work.

Democratic Family Policy: When the government accredits, promotes, and subsidises same-sex "marriages."  (Whoa!  The people are against this too.  What is going on here?)

(For the record:  I believe in the noble but now defunct American tradition of  Jeffersonian democracy—a free society with majority rule.  Majority rule is more likely to yield a just decision that any policy of a self-appointed Hamiltonian elite of the wise and good, i.e., rich.  This is only a practical position and not an article of holy doctrine.  The majority should usually decide those things which the majority has a right to decide.  However, in Jeffersonian democracy, almost all of private and social life lies beyond the jurisdiction of the state, whether ruled by the one, the few, or the many. What now passes for "democracy" in "America" is a universe away from the real thing.)

When and why did the critical shift occur in American mentality that caused “scholars” and journalists to stop reporting facts, events, and conditions observable in the world around us and concentrate on reporting their feelings about an imaginary world?

Is the servitude of Africans that existed in North America from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century really the greatest crime in history, as is frequently stated these days?

Did you know that the civilised tribes of Indians held black slaves?

Was Richard Weaver right when he wrote that the more decadent a society grows the less it has the power to discern its decadence?

Did Russell Kirk perhaps have a lesson for American conservatives when he observed that they too often mistook “the acquisitive instinct” for the very different “conservative disposition”?

Was Solzhenitsyn right when he said that an evil regime’s pervasive distortions of the truth are even worse than its physical oppression?

What did M.E. Bradford mean when he suggested that it was perilous for Americans to continue to worship Lincoln?

Should a federal judge have ordered taxpayers to provide weight equipment for imprisoned felons so they could get more muscular and be better able to resist arrest the next time?

Whenever you read of someone being arrested for a horrible crime, you usually learn that this person had been convicted several times previously for violent crimes but was still walking around free to commit more. This is so commonplace that we hardly even notice it any more. What is wrong with this picture?

What would happen if real issues were actually discussed in a presidential campaign instead of phony posturing and meaningless competitions? (A good guess is that the media, candidates, and party rulers would go postal and pull out all the stops to suppress any appearance of real issues.)

Once more, what is wrong with this picture?

If there had never been any racist, sexist, homophobes, would the United States exist to give affirmative action to minorities?

Does anyone in a position of authority or influence care that the American middle class, and therefore the country, is being demoralised and destroyed?

What exactly does it mean to say that a corporation is “too big to fail”? What if it keeps on failing?

What ever happened to that “lock box” where all the Social Security funds were kept?

Have you noticed how many brilliant and noble black presidents, soldiers, admirals, brain surgeons, scientific geniuses, and computer whizzes are around these days—at least on television and movies? Also in ancient Rome and Persia and Medieval and Renaissance Europe?

Why do Republicans who are declared by the press to be front-runners for the presidency always come from Massachusetts, New York, or some other Deep North State (where Republicans are a minority)?

Of the 435 or so Congressional districts, how many still have a majority American population?

In a best-case scenario, is it possible to elect enough Congressmen to act in the interest of real Americans?

If a person of Middle Eastern origins were truly a loyal American citizen, wouldn't he cheerfully accept "ethnic profiling" at airports because it might save the lives of his fellow American citizens?

A Congressman was recently outraged when he observed the "Transport Safety" people frisk an old lady and a little girl while allowing a Mideasterner with turban and flowing robes that might hide who-knows-what sail through. Why was the Congressman outraged? Is he not aware that this has been going on for years?

A bitter ex-Confederate once wrote that the Yankee race lived by delusions. Do the preceding questions suggest he may have had a point?

Might this critic of American society also point to the strange fact that a multi-billion-dollar educational system produces ever declining literacy and intelligence?

Suppose you are a person from India who is highly educated with valuable skills (physician, engineer, etc.) desperately needed in your underdeveloped and impoverished country. You immigrate to the United States for more money and an easier life. Will you be a better citizen of your new country than you were of your native land?  Should you demand that your new country honour the foreign "culture" you bring with you? Should you demand special privileges because you are an immigrant and "a person of colour"?

What is wrong with this picture?

Did you enjoy your “stimulus” money?

Do you think its wonderful that our Congresspersons and other federal officials constantly strive to make “our” lives better?

Isn’t a great example of bipartisan statesmanship that all our leaders got together to save “our” economy by giving billions to the New York banks and stock speculators?

Isn’t it good that both parties get together when necessary to kill dangerous people—as at Ruby Ridge and Waco?

Who* said: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."  (This was before there was TV.)

How many serious books have you read this year?  (Books by Glenn Beck, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Mitt Romney, or Stephen King don’t count.)

Why is "Sojourner Truth" the second best known figure in American history among school children?  Who is first?

Remind me again, why did "we" invade Iraq?

What was Michelle Obama's salary in Chicago?

Can you name two plagiarists who were until recently members of the U.S. Senate?

(This may all seem like old news.  But Americans, especially Republicans, have such short memories that they have to be reminded over and over again.  Test: Do you remember Scranton?  Two years from now will you remember Pawlenty?)

nosreffeJ samohT*

A good three-dollar cigar.

A Presidential contender who has once in his life done something that is truly worthwhile, notable, patriotic, or unselfish.

Fewer people who know what is best for other people. (This may require giving the Deep North back to Canada.)

A Presidential candidate who is actually a literate, mature, and wise human being. Someone who could, say, carry on a conversation with Thomas Jefferson (of course, necessarily as a humble learner). I'm no utopian. I'll settle for one who could carry on a conversation with Harry Truman and not be revealed as a ninny in five minutes.

Fewer bureaucrat generals and more soldier generals.

Fewer internet columnists.

Fewer people who think everybody else is eager to download and read every internet column that they happen to like.

More control and punishment of organised crime—the Mafia, Congress, federal judges, the Colombians, utilities companies, etc.

Fewer bastards (of both kinds)

Less porcine politicians. (They have already spent as much of our wealth as they could get away with in order to keep their own snouts in the trough. In fact, they have already spent all your children's wealth, and all your grandchildren's wealth and—).

More policemen who are "peace officers" here "to protect and serve" and fewer who think their mission is to intimidate people and boss them around.

A better class of legal immigrant.

Will you take a lie detector test about this?

Do you look forward to your descendants living in such a country?

Have you ever thought about your descendants at all?

Did your forebears intend to found or to immigrate to such a country?

Have you ever thought about your forebears at all?

All authorities today declare that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves.  Why is it so important to suppress any alternative  interpretation of this great historical event?

Why exactly  is Abraham Lincoln the greatest American?  Don't use vague platitudes to answer this.

When you say “we” are at war in Afghanistan, what precisely do you mean by “we”?

When you hear it said that “we” owe a trillion dollar federal debt, what precisely is meant by “we”?

Why exactly  is the Democratic party considered to be the “liberal” party?  What does “liberal” mean?

Why is the Republican party considered to be the “conservative” party?  What does “conservative” mean”?  What "conservative" policies has the Republican party ever implemented?

Why are there, for all practical purposes, only two political parties in the U.S., unlike most  free countries?  Was this ordained by the Constitution?

What exactly do we mean when we say “free country”?

Did our Founding Fathers fight a Revolution and found a new country for the purpose of  spreading democracy throughout the globe?

Did American men fight and die in World War II for the purpose of defending "diversity"?

What, precisely, is “democracy”?

What precisely does the phrase “all men are created equal” mean?

What qualities and accomplishments of greatness did John F. Kennedy exhibit?  The same question for George W. Bush?

Did Ronald Reagan create a “new morning in America”?

Why was Obama awarded the Nobel Prize?