Darkness Gathers Over Pakistan      "When we consider the
founders of our nation - Jefferson, Washington, Samuel and John
Adams, Madison and Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine and many
others - we have before us a list of at least ten and maybe even
dozens of great political leaders. They were well-educated.
Products of the European Enlightenment, they were students of
history. They knew human fallibility and weakness and
corruptibility... They attempted to set a course for the United
States into the far future - not so much by establishing laws as
by setting limits on what kinds of laws could be passed.
    Where are they?"  —Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, The Demon-
Haunted World. From Chapter 25, "Real Patriots Ask Questions",
p.428.  That passage has stayed with me ever since I first read
it. Where are the modern world's Thomas Jeffersons? Is it that
the philosophical climate that once produced great men like this
has changed, so that the people who could have been them never
come into being, never take the