Reddit mentions of The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams

Sure.

The most famous ones that come to mind are Johns Adams and Thomas Jefferson. There's about two volumes of their private correspondence. At least my copy is two volumes. (It looks like you can get the whole thing in one book now: http://www.amazon.com/Adams-Jefferson-Letters-Complete-Correspondence-Jefferson/dp/0807842303)

And yes, it's absolutely fascinating. Sure, there's some banal stuff in there about agriculture, but it's essentially a mini-history of the Revolutionary period to the 1820's. They discussed democracy, republicanism, Greece, Rome, the French Revolution, domestic politics, slavery, law, and everything under the sun.

You can buy a paper copy here.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Adams-Jefferson-Letters-Correspondence-Jefferson/dp/0807842303

But they are all publicly available for free if you google around

They were all organised into this book actually.

"...legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter written to the Danbury Baptist Association (emphasis added)

You can read Jefferson's full letter here. This letter reflects Jefferson's view of the Constitution. Keep in mind that Jefferson and John Adams were close friends, living near one another, and frequently corresponded on issues of religion and state. Adams, of course, is the one who actually set pen to parchment when writing the Constitution, and many of the ideas Adams and Jefferson shared were clearly reflected in the Constitution through Adams' hand.

This quote from Jefferson is in response from a letter from the Danbury Baptists, who were then a minority and worried that those papists got laws passed (like prayer in schools) to influence their children inappropriately. Ah, how the tables turn!

It's true, there's a lot more heat than light in most of these discussions. If you are interested, I'd recommend the Adams-Jefferson Letters. It chronicles their correspondence beginning in 1777. Not much on the Constitution in specific, but nevertheless an interesting window into what things were like in the early republic. I enjoyed it anyway :)

Yes, I know, I actually own a book on the Adams-Jefferson correspondance through their lifetimes.

>Maybe, but I suspect that Trump's complaints about executive orders are meaningless, and he will continue Obama's precedent of extraconstitutional dictats of law. Congress moves to block? Trump's got a pen and a phone, too. I can't wait to see the zero self awareness media slam him for it, too.

To be fair, Obama issued fewer executive orders than any other President since Papi Bush. But that is one tool in the American system that I worry about with Trump - a man who does not really see the use in a democracy - in charge. Restraint won't be his vocabulary.

>I actually think this is good in the long run. These movements are ultimately built on fictional grievance-mongering and collective power-craving. Once they actually have it, they fail to live up to their promises and are repudiated in the public image. It's happened to the regressive left via Sweden, Germany, and France, and now it's time to see the Le Pen wing of Europe learn the same lesson.

While I think the term 'Regressive Left' has been played out (thanks, Dave Rubin) by being applied to any movement even remotely interested in Identity Politics, I think I understand your argument. But I'm not sure I would call Stefan Löfven's Social Democratic government neither 'regressive' nor populist. Certainly Sweden has a activist culture bent towards Identity Politics, but the only real populist party in parliament are the Sweden Democrats, I would argue. And they're not exactly left-wing. And Merkel's CDU is nowhere near regressive nor 'left'!

>We're already there with the regressive left in charge. Georgian and Ukrainian military invasions went ignored. Traditional American conservative foreign policy is the right solution, but we won't get there until the warmongers, isolationists, and open-border huggybears have all been kicked out of office. Speak softly, and carry a big stick.

Once more, in the interest of fairness, The Ukrainian and Georgian invasions happened with centre-right governments in charge in every major EU player except Italy and France. I think we're venturing into territory where our clashing ideologies are about to, well, clash. Not that that's a conversation we need to have now. But suffice it to say, I don't necessarily want a hawkish or muscular American foreign policy. Nor do I want an isolationist one. I just want an administration that honors their NATO commitments and doesn't act as Russia's BFF.