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Quote Of The Day

From Peter Berkowitz, also quoting Pulitzer Prize winning historian Gordon Wood in part:

The name the founders' era gave to the new type of aristocrat was "gentleman." Unlike aristocrats in the old world, the gentleman in America was defined not by lineage and inherited goods, but rather by the qualities he exhibited and the character he cultivated. Civility and refinement were of the essence. The gentleman was also expected to be "reasonable, tolerant, honest, virtuous, and 'candid,' an important eighteenth-century characteristic that connoted being unbiased and just as well as frank and sincere." He was a democrat in the crucial sense that he did not consider himself to be born of, or cut from, finer materials than the people. And he was a liberal in an old-fashioned and equally crucial sense: He believed in natural rights and that under a government that protected them one could attain a wider, freer, more generous vantage point. His ideal was "grace without foppishness, refinement without ostentation, virtue without affectation, independence without arrogance."

Posted by Ken McCracken · 13 July 2006 10:18 PM

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