Benjamin Franklin

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  4/20/2022
  

  The Unbearable Whiteness of Ken Burns

  by Timothy Messer-Kruse

  In the context of today's battles over teaching the history of racism in America, the new Franklin documentary unfortunately uses its subject to spin a narrative of national self-correction that ignores historians' attention to conflict and struggle. 

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• 4/10/2022
  

  After His Bequest to Boost the Laboring Class, Ben Franklin Would be Shocked by Today's "Innovation" Economy

  by Michael Meyer

  Shortly before his death, Benjamin Franklin placed a bet on American workers, endowing a fund to lend money to the tradesmen he thought essential to the country's health. His bequest remains in play today, though America has parted ways from his vision. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  4/4/2022
  

  Ken Burns on the Revolutionary Ben Franklin

  "If you find out that, very early on, there’s somebody advocating emancipation, it just makes the narrative a little bit messier."

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• SOURCE: Salon
  2/21/2022
  

  How Ben Franklin Leveraged the French Addiction to Snuff to Get Aid for Independence

  by Willard Sterne Randall

  Without any tobacco-producing colonies, the French crown was eager to gain access to tobacco from Virginia, a fact deftly exploited by Franklin. 

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• SOURCE: Tablet
  8/4/2021
  

  The Franklin Prophecy and Antisemitic Forgery for Profit

  by Scott D. Seligman

  Remarks attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention calling for the exclusion of Jews from the new nation were concocted by "lifetime anticommunist and antisemitic nutjob" Willam D. Pelley in the 1930s. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/18/19
  

  ‘A republic, if you can keep it’: Did Ben Franklin really say Impeachment Day’s favorite quote?

  Here’s the history behind the quote.

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• 11/17/19
  

  Benjamin Franklin, Religious Revolutionary

  by J.D. Dickey

  Surprisingly, however, during America’s first major evangelical revival — the Great Awakening of the 1730s and ’40s — one of its most important figures had little use for religious conservatism. In fact, he wasn’t a preacher at all, but the reform-minded, freethinking Philadelphia printer Benjamin Franklin.

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• 10/13/19
  

  The Founders’ Furious Impeachment Debate--and Benjamin Franklin’s Modest Proposal

  by Harlow Giles Unger

  “This Magistrate is not the king! The people are the king!”

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• 1/27/19
  

  Trump, Benjamin Franklin, and the Long History of Calling Immigrants "Snakes"

  by Geoffrey Sill

  Trump’s unsupported allegations that immigrants are “animals, not people” may find a popular reception among many Americans because the association between immigrants, criminality, and reptility goes back to a period well before the founding of the nation. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/17/19
  

  Why Americans trust technology but not science

  by Joyce Chaplin

  Benjamin Franklin understood that the two go hand-in-hand.

• 
• SOURCE: The Daily Beast
  7-30-17
  

  Benjamin Franklin Was America's First Political Leaker

  As leak accusations rock the White House, Anthony Scaramucci and Donald Trump should know that American politics' first major leak came at a formative moment—by a founding father.

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• SOURCE: dna India
  1-27-15
  

  Benjamin Franklin's life inspired me, says Prime Minister Narendra Modi

  "He was a politician, he was a political scientist, he was a social worker, he was a diplomat. And he came from an ordinary family. He could not even complete his education. But till today, his thoughts have an impact on American life."

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• 7-14-14
  

  This Founding Father Wasn't Always Loved

  by Thomas A. Foster

  Ben Franklin had a lot of sex.

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• 9-30-13
  

  Practical Wisdom, According to Messrs. Franklin and Emerson

  by Walter G. Moss

  In the United States today few of us value wisdom. This was not always the case.