Len Lazarick: Representative of the ?great American interest?

When Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation governed by independent farmers, “attached to republican government and the principles of 1776,” he had in mind men like former Maryland Senate President James Clark Jr., the Howard County lawmaker who died Thursday at 87.

“Such men are the true representatives of the great American interest, and are alone to be relied on for expressing the proper American sentiments,” Jefferson wrote in 1797.