Do You Know The Fathers As Well As You Think? Ben Franklin

People today tend to view Ben Franklin with a rather kindly eye. He was an elderly guy, bald on top, wearing little glasses on his nose, and funny-looking clothes even for his day. If you are a bit more knowledgeable, you know that he was delegated to be an ambassador to the French court. He apparently took “foreign relations” a tad too seriously in one respect in that he was a serious recipient/giver of affection to the “ladies-of-the-court”. Fortunately, the French were more tolerant of various liaisons than our society. Oh, Benjamin.

Back home in Philadelphia, he took part in the conferences with the rest of the men who wound up writing the Constitution. Ben was a prolific writer in his own right and quite controversial. In today’s world, he would be somewhere to the LEFT of Bernie Sanders on most things. Being a Quaker had something to do with it, but Ben had strong opinions on many things and would argue strongly with the rest of them with well-reasoned arguments.

For example:

The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People’s Money out of their Pockets, tho’ only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors’ Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell’d to pay by some Law.

All Property, indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

The Writings of Benjamin Franklin. Edited by Albert Henry Smyth. 10 vols. New York: Macmillan Co., 1905–7.

This is from a letter to Robert Morris. If a politician said these words publicly today, the backlash would be all over them. His opinion was that if you don’t like playing by the rules of Society (paying taxes and abiding by the rules of that Society) then you have absolutely no right to the rights and benefits of that Society and should go live “with the Savages” (i.e. the Indians) would certainly raise a lot of sand today. I would dare say he might amend the statement to say something more along the lines of emigrating to another country.

It’s that suggestion that if you have more than you need, then whatever is determined to be “more than” belongs to the PUBLIC! Wouldn’t that shock Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Rex Tillerson, Rupert Murdoch, and David Koch! Washington could tell Musk “Hey, Elon, thanks for building that rocket plane for us. It’s ours now. Run along and play.” To Zuckerburg, “Thanks, buddy, appreciate everything you’ve done. Keep running it for us, will you?” Can you imagine the uproar??

There’s the logic that makes sense. The problem with it is that you are talking about PEOPLE and people are greedy beasts. Since we cannot go in and just TAKE those millions (or billions) of dollars that they’ll never spend, the land they’ll never use, the clothes they’ll never wear, or the yachts they’ll only brag about but never take out to sea past the maritime boundary, at least not without causing some kind of major malfunction with the MAGA folks. (Fact here: This does not apply unless you have an annual income OVER $450k/YEAR. Quite honestly, I’ve only met maybe 10 people in that category in my entire life.) That’s where the “wealth tax” comes into effect. It’s an indirect way of getting to the same result. The General Public (with the capital “P”) gets their fair share before the wealthy get to sock the remainder away somewhere.

Remember this, there are very, very few people who actually make it that big by their own work. Most of them either INHERITED a large stake from a family member (Elon Musk) OR they had mentors who INVESTED HEAVILY in them and who they OWE allegiance to (Clarence Thomas would be a terrific example of one of those.) Do yourself a favor and lose the rose-colored glasses about becoming really wealthy “just like them” one day. You won’t. Sorry. I won’t either. Not even if I do succeed at becoming an elected Senator. Why? I’m honest and that $17,000/yr salary isn’t going to make that much of a difference.

Ben Franklin also advocated for something that sounds remarkably like Bernie Sanders’ Universal Healthcare. Ye gods! Did anybody tell the MAGA people about this? They’d have to throw away all their $20 bills. He talked about things that sounded a lot like Social Security, disability, SNAP, and much more. Ben was much more of a ‘progressive’ liberal than he is given credit for being. One thing though that he was adamant about-he did not want any reference to any religion in a secular document. He was one of the ones who argued against having a “Christian God” included in anything, but finally agreed to the concept of a “Nature’s God” in the secular sense. He accurately foresaw that people would misuse the word as a cudgel to try to force their personal religious views upon others.

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