Not since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died--both on July 4, 1826--have we had such a stunning development. It took days, sometimes weeks, for Americans then to learn that the two great Signers of the Declaration of Independence had died on the same day--exactly fifty years after that document brought forth a new nation.Now, we have the discovery of Thomas Jefferson's changing a single word in his draft. Through hyperspectral imaging, the Library of Congress announces that we can clearly discern the word "subjects" expunged by Jefferson's own hand. In its place, he wrote the word "citizens" The media is all abuzz. Is it a mistake? A goof? A Freudian slip before Freud was born? What is the meaning of all this? Is it simply a Fourth of July coincidence? No. It is the Great Emendation. It is Jefferson's mentally moving himself and all of us from subjects to citizens. We can see in his own handwriting the progress of his thought and the forming of a new identity for...(Read Full Post)