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 Verbatim
Franklin's words of wisdom still resonate today
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| AP |
| The Drafting of the Declaration of Independence. From left, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, John Adams and Roger Sherman |
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What would the visionaries who conjured the alchemy of our democracy think of our current state? Our panel of experts is not short of views
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Posted Sunday, June 29, 2003; 2:31 a.m. EST
GORDON S. WOOD
Author, The Radicalism of the American Revolution; writing a book on Franklin
Franklin is the one founder who still has an immediate effect. People use him to justify the American dream. And immigrants still respond to this. This is a land of opportunity—you come here with very little, and you can make it. And Franklin still offers this lesson.
He's sort of the original American Dream, even though he was one of the last of the revolutionaries to jump on board. He remained in England almost to the end. In 1775 he returns, and he's suspected of being a British spy. So he has a hard time making it as an American in his own lifetime. But after
he dies he becomes the quintessential American.
LYNNE CHENEY
Author of the children's book America: A Patriotic Primer
James Madison's ideas are almost in the air that we breathe. They are the DNA of our society. Every time we think about politics, we are thinking about a political system that was largely conceived by him and embodied by him in the Constitution. And when we speak out, we're calling upon the Bill of Rights, of which he was the principal author. And when we go to the church of our choice, we're fulfilling an ideal he was passionate about, which was that there would be no state religion in America. He's everywhere. So like other things that are everywhere, like air and DNA, we don't think about it very much. And so I like to call attention to Madison for his stunning accomplishment.
BILL BENNETT
Director, Empower America
My guy is Madison, which is a little unusual. Most people you talk to, you'll get Jefferson or Adams now—Adams is in fashion. Obviously, Washington is critical. But I've always been a Madison guy. I like a couple of things about him. He had a gift of chronic anonymity ... he would be in a meeting, and he was so nondescript and small, people wouldn't even notice he was there. But he would be directing the outcome of the meeting by his occasional comments. This is what he did all during the Philadelphia convention. And there's a quote—I think it's John Quincy Adams who said, "It is by virtue of the emanations of his mind that we are today able to call ourselves fellow citizens."
DAVID MCCULLOUGH
Author, John Adams; currently working on a book about the Revolutionary War
Adams didn't fight in the war. He served in many ways with greater effect in the long run than if he had served in the military, because he helped get the money to pay for it. We had virtually nothing with which to stand up against this most powerful military force in the world. We didn't have any money. And it was devilish hard to get in the early years. John Adams secured loans from Holland, which were decisive. He traveled farther in the service of his country than any other principal American figure of that time, at great risk, inconvenience and discomfort. And he never failed to answer the call of the country to serve. His greatest contribution, I suppose, was that he was the one who fought the good fight in Congress. He was the one who got the Declaration of Independence through Congress. It was a very difficult decision, because anyone who put his signature on that document was declaring himself a traitor and if caught would be hanged.
There was a wonderful American audacity about what they were attempting, given that they had no army and no navy and that there wasn't a bank in the entire 13 colonies—there was no one currency. There were tremendous regional rivalries. When George Washington took command of the army in Boston, he could barely abide New Englanders, but he overcame his own bias, and many of the New England officers turned out to be the best he had for the long haul.
NEWT GINGRICH
Former Congressman from Georgia and former Speaker of the House
Washington's favorite play was Cato, which is essentially a Whig play about the importance of freedom and Cato's willingness to kill himself rather than live under Caesar.
I revere Washington the most; I like Franklin the most. Franklin had a zest for life, a practicality, an ingenious capacity to invent both socially and technologically ... He is the most Renaissance of all the founding fathers. He was the original compassionate conservative. He'd say we have too much government and need to find ways to privatize more.
[The Founders] are the wisest and most effective small group in secular human history ... Their understandings of the practicality of leading human beings [and] the level of professionalism that they had both as politicians and as leaders is unrivaled. If you take the core group—Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, George Mason—there's actually no group quite like them—maybe at the early stages of the Roman republic, which is lost in antiquity. But the sense of balance, practicality combined with a deep theoretical understanding of human nature and a deep reading of history—they're in a different league.
H.W. BRANDS
Professor of history at Texas A&M; author, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
When Benjamin Franklin was walking out of the last session of the convention, a woman from Philadelphia stopped him on the street, and said, "Dr. Franklin, what have you produced?" And he said, "A republic—if you can keep it."
He would have been quite pleased, thrilled and gratified that his handiwork and that of his generation have lasted as long as it has. On the other hand, there are certain things about American politics, especially today, that would shock him, perhaps appall him—in particular, the huge role of money in American politics. Franklin spent most of the two decades before the American revolution in London. What made him a rebel, what made him an American patriot, was observing how corrupt British politics had become under the influence of insider position, insider money, insider power.
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