David Hackett Fischer Quotes
Most Americans do not think of liberty and freedom as a set of texts, or a sequence of controversies or a system of abstractions. They understand these ideas in another way, as inherited values that they have learned early in life and deeply believe.
David Hackett Fischer, Historian, Liberty and Freedom, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
She herself was an advocate for monogamy, but was opposed to the state or society interfering with anyone who chose differently. There was no position she advocated that was opposed and ridiculed more than this one. And her tying the Constitution to sexual freedom was itself considered not only whacky, but obscene and an insult to the Constitution and nation itself. The advocacy of the right of interracial marriage was as shocking as anything could be in those days. What would have surprised all those who derided her the most was that her sexual demands in toto became the law of the land and today, any government action to the contrary would shock and alarm most Americans.
The 3rd sentence is one of his greatest quotes. He delivered this speech towards the end of the 1st year of President Donald Trump's Administration. Althought he never mentioned Trump by name, this speech was a rare major criticism of a sitting president by a former president. This was also one of the few speeches Bush gave after leaving office. On the same day, former President Barak Obama also gave a major speech and also castigated President Trump although neither of the ex-presidents knew that the other was about to deliver their criticism of Trump. It was one of the very unusal occurances in American history.
David Hackett Fischer is University Professor of History at Brandeis University. Fischer's major works have covered topics ranging from large macroeconomic and cultural trends (Albion's Seed, The Great Wave) to narrative histories of significant events (Paul Revere's Ride, Washington's Crossing) to explorations of historiography (Historians' Fallacies, in which he coined the term "historian's fallacy").
