{"id":20808,"date":"2026-03-26T10:38:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20808"},"modified":"2026-03-01T15:03:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T22:03:57","slug":"thomas-jefferson-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20808","title":{"rendered":"The Founders: Thomas Jefferson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Thomas Jefferson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and a signer.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.<\/strong>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my favorite Jefferson quotes<\/a>. There are many more sprinkled through my twenty plus years of writing this blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

It is surprising to me that Thomas Jefferson <\/a><\/strong>has lost some of his luster as one of the founders. Nobody is perfect and we are all living in the systems we are in. Slavery was accepted around the world in 1700 and was almost gone by 1900. Jefferson lived during that transition. No apologies but many kudos for all of the bravery and intellectual leadership he showed during the founding of our nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is one of the four or five signers that people can name. There are lots of very good books about Jefferson and a visit to Monticello is a peak experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Jefferson Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and a signer. “When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.“ One of my favorite Jefferson quotes. There are many more sprinkled through my twenty plus years of writing this blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1543],"tags":[1541,311,839],"class_list":["post-20808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-founding-fathers","tag-founding-fathers","tag-politics","tag-thomas-jefferson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-28-at-12.39.53-PM.png?fit=718%2C1052&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-5pC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20808"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20827,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20808\/revisions\/20827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}