Quotes from Jon Meacham

the only genuine obstacle to the rise of socialism or communism in America." Civil rights, Thurmond declared, were a Red plot against the Free World: "Only the States Rights Democrats—and we alone—have the moral courage to stand up to the Communists and tell them this foreign doctrine will not work in free America.

the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship to former slaves and guaranteed, at least on paper, equal protection. The amendment established the principle of birthright citizenship (thus overturning Dred Scott and making blacks citizens), and, with its equal protection clause, put the idea of equality into the Constitution for the first time, making the federal government, not the states, the protector of Americans' liberties.

The federal budget had last been in balance under President Johnson. Since then, federal outlays had outpaced federal revenues at an ever-rising rate.

John Kennedy's death had changed everything. "Now I represent the whole country, and I can do what the whole country thinks is right," Johnson said. "Or ought to.

president of the United States—himself an heir to the white populist tradition of Thurmond and of Alabama's George Wallace—said that there had been an "egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides," as if there were more than one side to a conflict between neo-Nazis who idolized Adolf Hitler and Americans who stood against Ku Klux Klansmen and white nationalists.

A true patriot salutes the flag but always makes sure it's flying over a nation that's not only free but fair, not only strong but just. History and reason summon us to embrace love and loyalty—to a citizenship that seeks a better world, calls on those better angels, and fights for better days. What, really, could be more patriotic than that? What, in the end, could be more American?

After the deep recession of 1981–82, the country had had several good years under the Reagan presidency. (Though at a price: The federal debt—or accumulated deficits—had tripled from fiscal 1980 to fiscal 1989.) Beginning in 1989, the economy grew at below-typical rates.

America must move forward. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law, and those who pour venom into our Nation's bloodstream.

I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of "it's" for "its" and "recieve" for "receive

The search for the point of temperate power between competing elements of life—the national government and the states, the states and the people—was far from over.

Long argued that both Democrats and Republicans had failed the country at one time or another. Power was concentrated in the hands of a self-serving financial and political elite. Only radical change, brought about by dynamic, unconventional leaders—leaders like Long—could make the nation the property of the people once more:

get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights

King continued: "It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, 'That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.' That's the question facing America today.

disaffected began to carry Confederate battle flags to rallies, seeking to link their cause with the Lost one.

You've just got to pick the man you think is best on the basis of his past history

To be tall and forbidding might command respect for a time, but not affection. To be overly familiar might command affection for a time, but not respect.

One point of this book is to remind us that imperfection is the rule, not the exception. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, who worked as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger in Jim Crow–era Alabama.

The degree to which age was an issue in 1980 was illustrated by a pro-Bush scenario sketched out by James B. "Scotty" Reston of The New York Times: "George Bush's hope is that Messrs. Reagan and Connally will knock each other out because they're too old and that the party will have to turn in a convention deadlock to younger men.

The genius of America lies in its capacity to forge a single nation from peoples of remarkably diverse racial, religious, and ethnic origins….The American Creed envisages a nation composed of individuals making their own choices and accountable to themselves, not a nation based on inviolable ethnic communities….It is what all Americans should learn, because it is what binds all Americans together.

Unflinching creeds and consuming worldviews could lead to catastrophe, for devotees of doctrine tended to fall in love with their own righteousness, ignoring inconvenient facts. He

Life will never be what we want it to be, and the best we can do, in the end, is to endure, seeking love in a fallen world that's destined to disappoint us.

Fact is what we can see or discern; truth is the larger significance we extrapolate from those facts.

He was a man of his time on the question of guns, writing in 1822 that "every American who wishes to protect his farm from the ravages of quadrupeds and his country from those of biped invaders" should be a "gun-man," adding: "I am a great friend to the manly and healthy exercises of the gun."43,44,45

We stand now at the cross, in the moments of Jesus's greatest pain. May we bear in mind the central emotional truth of Good Friday: that the Christian tradition grew from the most wrenching, mysterious, and mystifying sacrifice imaginable—that of a father's offering of his child.