Wise Man:

...Well, I went to the library and checked it out, and it was 1,415 pages thick, I think, written by Tolstoy, as you know, about Napolean's entry into Russia in the 1812-15 era. He had never been defeated, and he was sure he could win, but he underestimated the severity of the Russian winter and the peasants' love for their land.

To make a long story short, the next spring he retreated in defeat. The course of history was changed; it probably affected our own lives.

The point of the book is, and what Tolstoy points out in the epilogue is, that he didn't write the book about Napoleon or the Czar of Russia, or even the generals, except in a rare occasion. He wrote it about the students and the housewives and the barbers and the farmeers and the privates in the army. And the point of the book is that the course of human events, even the greatest historical events, are not determined by the leaders off a nation or a state, like Presidents or governors or senators. They are controlled by the combined wisdom and compassion and love and idealism of the common ordinary people. If that was true in the case off Russia where they had a czar or France where they had an emperor, how much more true is it in out own case where the Constitution charges us with a direct responsibility for determining what our government is and ought to be?

Well, I've read parts of the embarrassing transcripts, and I've seen the proud statements of a former attorney general, who protected his boss, and now brags on the fact that he tiptoed through a mine field and came out "clean." I can't imagine somebody like Thomas Jefferson tiptoeing through a mine field on the technicalities of the law, and then bragging about being clean afterwards.

I think our people demand more than that. I believe that everyone who is in a position of responsibiilty as a preserver of the law in its purest form ought to remember the oath that Thomas Jefferson and others took when they practically signed their own death warrant, writing the Declaration of Independence - to preserve justice and equity and freedom and fairness, they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. ...

Jimmy Carter Law Day Address , delivered at the University of Georgia May 4, 1974

See the full .pdf text of the speech