Founding Pettifoggers

Both Jefferson and John Adams were politicians, weren't they? When people revere the founding fathers, they don't talk much about that. This book showed how John Adams was big in favor of free speech until he got elected President, then it was throw his political enemies in jail for criticizing the government. With Jefferson he even got the whole idea of free speech pretty much named after him, and he got elected president on the free speech issue, then when he was president, seems like a little prosecution of his political opponents suddenly wasn't such a bad thing. So let's not think of them as infallible, ok? And when we're talking about what the constitution meant back then, let's be sure to consider what it meant to ordinary people not just the politiicans.