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Benjamin Franklin Would Have Been
a Great Blogger
By Jane
Hampton Cook
Benjamin Franklin would have been a great blogger.
He would have loved the blogosphere. This founding father and
publisher of the best selling publication of the 1750s wouldn’t
have been able to resist the chance to instantly publish his
witty thoughts.
He might comment on Former White House
Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book by writing something like
he did in 1757. “It is hard for an empty bag to stand
upright.”
Franklin would have loved the expediency and instantaneous
nature of Blogging. For 25 years he compiled an annual almanac.
Image waiting a year to publish all of the satire, analytical
thought, and weather predictions that came in and out of his
head.
After he signed the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, he could have posted his most sobering
observation about the desire to replace royalty with
representation: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we
shall all hang separately,” he said.
Franklin was frugual. He would have loved
the economics of blogging. For
years
he ate his breakfast porridge with a pewter spoon out of an
earthen bowl worth merely two pennies. One morning his wife
surprised him, presenting his cereal in a china bowl with the
aid of a silver spoon.
Franklin
noted, “But mark
how luxury will enter families!”
No doubt he might say the same thing about Congress's spending
habits.
Franklin
would have made his blogs a conversation between himself and the
reader, much like he did with his almanac, concluding regularly
with “I am, dear Reader, Thy obliged Friend.” He would have
told them the “Naked Truth” as he did in 1744 when he
confessed that writing his almanac was as much for him as it was
for his readers.
The authenticity of
blogging would have challenged Franklin. He built his business
through a diligent work ethic. “In
order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took
care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to
avoid all appearances to the contrary. I drest plainly,” he
wrote.
He
also took great pride in his reputation for accuracy.
When
one of his competitors falsely predicted an eclipse that never
took place,
Franklin
pointed out the folly. “There
is no manner of Truth in this Prediction,”
Franklin
wrote.
He then assured his readers he had not changed his ways or tried
any wild new prediction processes. “I
have made no Alteration in my usual Method,” he
wrote.
Franklin would have loved the analytical
thought process that blogging offers. When Pennsylvania leaders
met to to draft a state constitution, he would have welcomed the
opportunity to instantly publish his analysis. “A plural
Legislature is as necessary to good Government as a single
Executive. It is not enough that your Legislature should be
numerous; it should also be divided,” he observed.
Most of all, Franklin would have loved
blogging because he loved freedom. He gave up his quiet life to
live loudly for liberty for us, the "unborn millions"
to come.
Blogging is one of the most visible examples of free speech and
free press in the United States culture today.
“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be
no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick
Liberty
, without Freedom of Speech,”
Franklin
wrote in 1722 for The New-England Courant.
As bloggers know, the same is true today.
Jane Hampton
Cook is the author of Stories
of Faith and Courage from the Revolutionary War, a
365-day digest with personal writings from about 20 key players
in the Revolutionary War. She is the former White House deputy
director of Internet news services to President George W. Bush.
Ms. Cook resides in
Vienna
,
Va.
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