Jon Meacham
Jon Meacham
Jon Ellis Meachamis executive editor and executive vice president at Random House. He is a former editor-in-chief of Newsweek, a contributing editor to Time magazine, editor-at-large of WNET, and a commentator on politics, history, and religious faith in America. He won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
Date of Birth20 May 1969
CountryUnited States of America
government principles duty
No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.
enemy sometimes failing
Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.
religious elements given
Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.
religious prayer school
The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.
political might spending
The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.
biblical light scripture
Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason.
today doe prejudice
In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes.
fate thinking answers
I don't think anyone is qualified to answer questions of eternal fate definitively, much less pinpoint it to a given day.
rejection mind liberty
An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.
dream believe cutting
I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas; it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.
sibling psychology plot
Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.
religious issues race
It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972, the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama, who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters.
government america wish
History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other?
activists convinced history humility monopoly move themselves
Too many activists have convinced themselves that they have a monopoly on truth. A little humility and a sense of history could move us all forward.