Symposium on Epic of Thomas Jefferson: Embargo Act of 1807 & the Quest for Limited Government over Big Government

By Festus Ogunbitan

A symposium style of the biography of President Thomas Jefferson written in Greek-style epideictic oratory for reading in general non-fiction category.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493183630

Festus Ogunbitan

Festus Ogunbitan was born in Ibadan, Nigeria to Elder and Mrs. Oguniyi Ogunbitan of Temidayo Printing Press. He immigrated to United States and attended Sacramento State University where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in English Language. He later changed to Liberal Arts department and obtained a master’s degree in Liberal Arts. It was in Liberal Arts department that Festus got interested in Roman and Greek religions because their values and virtues are well interpreted and advanced into science and technology for producing uncountable goods and services for all mankind to enjoy. As a result of this, Festus wrote Cincinnatus and A Tale on Homer’s Odyssey, and he has written several titles on European and American literatures.

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Copyright © 2014 by Festus Wale Ogunbitan.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4931-8362-3

                eBook           978-1-4931-8363-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 04/28/2014

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CONTENTS

FROM CINCINNATUS

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON

THOMAS JEFFERSON REINVENTING AMERICA

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

END NOTE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENDNOTES

PLATO REPUBLIC

JEFFERSON

&

THE NEW DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Festus Ogunbitan

American Symposium Series

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FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

Purpose of Writing Epic of Thomas Jefferson

&

The Quest for Limited Government

Over Big Government

Purpose of writing this symposium is to reclaim the dream of President Thomas Jefferson by adapting his intelligent quotes into Greek-style epideictic novel. I have reconstructed his great speeches with the speeches of other America’s founding fathers; King George III of England, and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France to write fifty percent of the dialogues in this play, and to demonstrate why the culture of political interchanges have been the factor for economic and social progress in Western Civilization.

According to Charlene Spretnak in The Resurgence of the Real; Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World, he referred to the disappearance of educative rhetoric in our schools and colleges, when he said, "Learning, especially at the university level is strictly divided into departments, which have little interaction. One of the compartments, spiritual and religious life is devalued in modernity because modern history celebrates the escape from religion and other superstitions. In the modern era, institutionalized religions have downplayed spiritual connectedness with creation; instead, they focus on rationalist application of morals and ethics. This motivated me to write Greek-style epideictic novels for all United States’ presidents to retell the great history of this country. Modern literature regards telling stories through the traditional method of focus on epic heroes as backward and anachronistic; but there is something that the society can learn through the locus of these heroes. Playwrights and poets through the centuries seemed not to have narrated the great history of this country for permanence in our memory as Sophocles, Aristophanes, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow and many other great writers narrated the great history of Greece and England on the theaters of all schools and colleges through epideictic oratory. I am continuing this project with the story of the American Revolution, and the effort of President Jefferson, the third president of this great country.

According to Prof. Athanassakis Apostolos in his lecture to Hellenistic Society at Sacramento State University in 2008, he mentioned that modern literature, and contemporary historians have failed to retell the story of our great heritage for permanence; he warned that if care is not taken to find the right language and literature (epideictic rhetoric) to retell history, ‘our children will forget.’ David Starkey, a British Historian, also commented on how contemporary culture of imitation of Hip Hop lyrics has caused disappearance of articulate language and literature in the British society. He stated that ‘it is a Jamaican patois that has intruded in England, which is why so many of us have this sense that we are literally living in a foreign country. This problem also started with some English Language and Theater Arts’ professors since the 1980s’ who taught it is proper to bring vague literatures and movies into the classrooms for education, because they are poetically challenged by the philosophy and psychology with which the old literatures are written. Most of today’s movies and dramas are for entertainment alone, they are not for education.

According to W.J.T. Mitchell in Ways of Reading: Words and Images; he quoted from W.E.B Du Bois’ article that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of television. Du Bois emphasized that the society have become potently manipulable elements in pervasive technologies of simulation and mass mediation; we may find that the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of image. Certainly I would be the first to suggest that we live in a culture dominated by pictures, visual simulations, stereotypes, illusions, copies, reproductions, imitations, and fantasies. Anxieties about the power of visual culture are not just province of critical intellectuals, everyone knows that television is bad for you, and that its badness has something to do with the passivity and fixation of the spectator… What we need is critique of visual culture that is alert to the power of images for good and evil, and that is capable of discriminating the variety and historical specificity of their uses.

Modern literature has misled us to believe that Liberal Arts—epideictic rhetoric, which is the beginning of all departments in colleges and universities is no longer needed in modern civilization. As a result, the foundation of creativity and industrial growth, which the great scholars of deposed College of Liberal Arts built for thousands of years for earth’s growth has been wrongly accredited to the success of plain and dry modern language that contains no philosophy. In a few years’ time, the rich inheritance from the College of Liberal Arts will soon dry up in our children, and the earth may fall into unfathomable problem as students are void of the high energy of critical thinking through the avoidance of Greek-style epideictic oratory in our schools and in the media. However, faculty of science, and law schools did not change from the clichés and imagery of epideictic jargons, if they also choose to do so James Madison indicated that they will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted and bastardized form of illegitimate government.

From my high school days in Nigeria, I have been opened to British history through The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and Shakespeare’s plays. When I reached the University in America, I started to further appreciate the Greek and British poets through the great works, which the epic playwrights did for Greece and Europe by rewriting European history with philosophical poetry that consciously controls the minds of its readers.

Examples of literatures that consciously control the minds of its readers are: Iliad, Livy’s Pentads, The Aeneid, Taoist Books, Shakespeare’s plays, I Have a Dream, Bible, Bhagavad Gita, and many others; these writers have used Greek-style epideictic oratory style of writing to make the history and struggle of their various nations very permanent in our memory. Hoping to permanently retell the history of America, I have decided to use Aristotle’s theory of catharsis to rewrite America’s history through the locus of all presidents, or the first family to have a permanent knowledge of America’s history. All the plays shall incorporate the principles of American politics, focusing on the values and virtues of the Conservatives and the Liberals.

Story Plot of Symposium on Epic of Thomas Jefferson: Embargo Act of 1807 & The Quest for Limited Government over Big Government

European wars resumed after a short truce in 1802-1803, this war caused American relations during the regime of President Thomas Jefferson to deteriorate rapidly with King George III of Britain,