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CHAPTER 1
NATIONAL DEFICIT
... FDA LABELING
The truth of the matter is that I do watch, rarely fascinated, usually appalled, all too frequently horrified. Most often I avert my eyes from the pablum that poses as entertainment, choosing rather to observe those real-world occurrences of intellectual intrigue or of human humor.
But it was intrigue that drew me to watch your television. Dr. Carl Sagan's Cosmos was the program. While my present venue within the very cosmos of which he spoke allows me greater insight ... perhaps, better stated, farsight ... as to that infinite universe in which the good earth resides, Dr. Sagan provided a context and calibration to consider our world against all else. It was the latter, the calibration, that caused me to pause when Dr. Sagan lectured that the nearest star to our sun is 4.5 million light-years away. Had he stated that the distance was equal to a hundred ocean voyages between America and England, I would have comprehended the magnitude more surely and quickly, having made many Atlantic crossings under sail and so become familiar with this span of miles, the first crossing having been made when I was eighteen, the last sixty-one years later; moreover, since I well know the magnitude of the number one hundred, the calculation of the total distance was well within my ken; thus I would have had a point of reference calibrated by experience. But 4.5 million light-years? Curious reader, it is:
186,000 miles x 60 x 60 x 24 [??] 365 x 4,500,000
I beseech you, wary citizens, do not retrieve your handheld calculator to perform this multiplication, lest you burn your hand as your clever but overtaxed device melts.
As a million light-years, let alone 4.5 million light-years, is a figure of no relevant experience to almost all Americans, neither, quite apparently, is a trillion dollars. But, fearful reader, I am miserably sorrowful to advise you that it should be.
From what I was able to glean, America's annual deficit is currently a fearsome $1.3 trillion, which, piled on top of past sins ... excuse me ... past annual deficits, totals more than $13 trillion.
In all of its enlightened majesty the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that food products be labeled with calories per serving and per package. To assist Americans in understanding fiscal deficits, a Federal Deficit Administration (FDA) should be hastily formed. This new FDA could be staffed by a single energetic bureaucrat possessing a robust calculator. The diligent government employee would, as I trust Congress mandates, divide all deficit numbers by the number of citizens and households in the United States. And all federal programs would be divided by the same two factors. Hence, when your Federal Government announced financial information, it would, as the first FDA required, provide serving information ... perhaps, as follows:
This year we expect a record $1.3 trillion deficit, which when added to our existing debt, will total $13 trillion. Hence, under FDA labeling criteria, each citizen is responsible for $42,000 of debt and each household $113,000 of debt. Accordingly, assuming a 4 percent cost of borrowing, this year we will need a check from each and every American for $1,700 to pay China, Japan, and others for the interest on monies we owe them. Thank you for your time, and God Bless America.
Since I opened this diminutive essay by referencing television, let me return to the great giver of light and noise. For many Americans, television has become both a pacifier and a false voice of self-worth. I came, after much hesitancy, to this conclusion while considering the great Colosseum in Rome. A Colosseum where, for the morbid enjoyment of the masses, humanity was discarded and humans were first degraded, then slain. Many reality TV programs shown today on America's networks likewise degrade humans for the enjoyment of the masses; but, unlike Rome, the Colosseum is brought to each American's house — no need to exercise by walking to a great amphitheater.
Dear Americans, please, do not sit stationary, as a great stuffed animal, in the glow of your television and view those Americans who possess few redeeming attributes, thus taking comfort in your life's station; rather, look to those Americans of productive achievement, in whatever discipline or passion, and strive to better yourself against their mark.
"There is much difference in imitating a good man, and counterfeiting him."
Poor Richard's; November 1738
CHAPTER 2
RELIGIONS, WINDOWS TO GOD
... HEATHENS PEER THROUGH CIRCULAR WINDOWS
One month before I departed your earth, I knew the last page of my well-worn book was near, it so happened that my good friend the Reverend Ezra Stiles of Yale, the President of that great College, asked whether I had accepted Jesus as my savior. As your contemporary jargon would have it, I punted. To the good Reverend I wrote that Jesus offered unto man the most worthy structure of morals the world had ever seen, or would likely ever see. I did not equivocate. On whether Jesus was divine I proffered these uncertain thoughts: "I have some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble." Again, as you would say, "That was then and this is now."
My present status and venue allow me to address you on this subject of religion with a certain perspective and credibility that none of you yet possess. I will neither speak of Jesus as the Son of God, nor speak of God, but for you, most courteous and curious reader, I will identify that which is the holiest and most sacred of those religions practiced on our good earth. But first a short discourse containing a parable crafted to convey the truth of a matter.
"Talk against religion is unchaining a tiger; the beast let loose may devour his keeper."
Poor Richard's; September 1751
I ask that you imagine, in the beginning of our world, that all of mankind had lived together in a large dark room with no windows or portals. Outside, the sun, with its lifegiving warmth and light, shone brightly, but not on cloistered mankind. In time religions within the dark room sprang forth to help mankind see and feel the sun's golden glow. Each religion, within the confines of this dark room, constructed its own unique window, thus allowing its followers to bask in a Godly life of light and warmth. While each window, each religion, was unique, they all let in the sun's blessing of light.
The window built by the Quakers was square with no glass; only shutters at its sides to hold back night's coldness. Presbyterians gathered and prayed before a large window with six clear panes of leaded glass constructed by their most holy ministers. Another window constructed by the Jews took the shape of a six-pointed star. Followers of the Vatican knelt before an arched window of many multicolored panes that together depicted Mary, Mother of God; while Muslims flocked to the crescent moon and star window.
Though each window was different from any other, they all admitted the sun's holy grace; and the light flowing through each window onto that window's religious believers in no way diminished the light flowing through the other windows onto the believers of the other religions. The sun's rays unfailingly shone bright and full on all believers who gathered before a particular religion's window, a window of their own choosing.
If the leaders of one religion beseeched others to leave their religion's window and instead feel the sun's warmth through their own religion's window, by tendering whatever argument or logic — "our window is not distorted by colored glass" — so be it. But over time such solicitation empowered the Devil to play his hand. Manifestly it is the Devil's work when pious leaders of one religion teach that only their window offers the true light and warmth, the True God; and, further teach that to view the sun through another window than theirs is wrong, and thereby diminishes and insults the light and warmth that flows through their one true window.
But that, I fear, represents not the worst of treachery in the name of religion. For reasons and motives comprising varying portions of insecurity, self-importance, greed, dogmatic disputation, ignorance, lack of stature, or sexual confusion, the Devil's most trusted disciples proclaim, while speaking as the anointed leaders of their religion, usually in a most unseemly, animal-like rant — if animals could speak they would be truly offended — that worshippers enjoying the warmth and light of the sun through a window other than their own should be slain and their untrue window destroyed.
"Pious leaders speaking for God drive more to atheism than the Devil."
Poorer Richard's America; September 2010
So then, dear reader, which religion on earth speaks of the True God and is most righteous? The answer is self-evident. It is that religion that does not claim it stands above any other religion that teaches all men should love all mankind.
CHAPTER 3
BALLOONS AND FEDERAL BUDGETS
... THEY CAN ONLY CARRY SO MUCH
Three children, gifted to me. Two boys first, then my daughter Sarah. A Sarah addressed as Sally by all who knew her as a friend. But never more than two children in our home on Market Street. My second son, Francis Folger Franklin ... we called him Franky ... taken by smallpox when he was four. Seven years after Franky was laid to rest our daughter's squeals filled my home. Delightful and sprightly, it was Sally who gave me the most joy, both as an affectionate child, and later as a woman and mother to six. Those six glorious grandchildren who always had time, questions, and smiles for me, as I always had answers, limericks, songs, tricks, and love for them. And from Sally's brood, my favorite grandchild; after two hundred years I will concede, yes, there was a favorite, he was Benny.
In the early summer of 1783 Benny joined me at my home in Passy; a quaint village only a long walk, or a brief carriage ride, from Paris. He had been attending school in Geneva while I had, through the expenditure of much patience and strategy, more certainly the former than the latter, helped to negotiate the Provisional Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War the previous year, though the final articles of peace were not signed until some considerable time later, after more long months of national posturing.
With American blood no longer being bartered for liberty, I savored the summer of 1783 with Benny as my guest. Yet it was the fall of that year that was the most remarkable. On a cool and clear day we journeyed to Paris with much anticipation. There, to our delight and wonder, Benny and I observed Jacques Charles, a Parisian of curious intellect, ever so patiently pour oil of vitriol on red-hot iron, thus producing hydrogen that soon expanded and filled a silk balloon as large as a fair-sized parlor. In time the majestic balloon rose, then drifted from our view. It carried neither man nor beast aboard. Once touching down on earth again some ten miles away, it was attacked by farmers with passion and fright. Later that fall, November it was, I witnessed the first manned flight: A hot-air balloon ever so slowly lifted two French gentlemen, champagne in hand, high above Paris. At this sight, a sight never seen before, men cheered, women fainted, and I marveled.
Recalling now those attributes, those characteristics, those realities of a balloon's ability to rise, I think again of the troubling news our latest federal budget so recently conveyed to us. Hot-air balloons are not unlike our federal budget. A balloon is only of a certain size and can therefore lift only so many passengers; in this selfsame way our federal budget can fund only so many federal programs.
If the balloonist wishes to carry more passengers ... fund more federal programs ... he needs to increase the size of the balloon ... increase taxes. If the balloonist wishes to add another passenger ... a new federal program ... to those already in the basket hanging below the balloon ... existing federal programs ... he needs to remove an individual ... program ... from the basket ... otherwise the balloonist must increase the size of the balloon ... taxes.
And as certain as the sun rises in the east, as certain as leaves turn brown with fall, all tax increases eventually burden each and every American family. Raise corporate taxes and corporate executives will not dutifully lower their salaries to maintain their company's profits, rather, the price of a Big Mac, a ride at Disney World, and six pairs of socks in the economy pack, will all drift higher.
My fellow Countrymen and Countrywomen, you may clamor for as many federal programs as you wish. Do so with caution; know well that each and every federal program is paid for dearly in the end by us Americans. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; both in physics and in budgeting.
"Beware of the little expenses, small leaks will sink the greatest ships."
Poor Richard's; January 1745
CHAPTER 4
PREJUDICE
... I'M NOT, BUT ALL OF YOU ARE
William Hazlitt became a much-esteemed English essayist and literary critic two decades after I met his father at the University of Glasgow. As an agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly to England, I stole days from my duties to visit Scotland and Ireland. On one such excursion to Edinburgh in 1759 I was honored to meet the most esteemed Adam Smith and David Hume. They and others were then in the midst of creating the Scottish Enlightenment, the intellectual flowering that so distinguished that industrious small nation in my time, which is deserving of much applause and which I was privileged to experience firsthand, however glancingly, by touching its periphery.
Pardon me this slight digression as I tug my recollections back to the theme of this essay, to wit: William Hazlitt famously wrote, "Ignorance is the father of prejudice," a resounding statement that has, over the centuries, quite properly been much repeated in oratory and print. Perhaps his claim that ignorance fathers prejudice is without debate. While not offering debate, permit me to tender for your consideration this proposition: that a foul prejudice may manifest itself also in the offspring of generations down the line; that is, not only in the originating sire's children, but in his grandchild, great-grandchildren, and so on, generation to generation; prejudice, once firmly rooted, violently resists extirpation. Consider further, if you will, the following: Of all those things in a man's life, in his constitution, in his morality, that one thing, that one topic that he cannot speak to, is his own prejudice. Prejudice is not an absolute, is not quantifiable as are ounces to a pint or weights to a scale. Prejudice is a measurement of one man's beliefs against that man's own measuring stick, a measuring stick that is unique to him and resides within his mind: a measuring stick that is uniquely calibrated to that man's life experiences and, of no less weight, to that which he has been taught.
Of those many essays penned by me during my life, many spoke to occurrences that, depending on one's station in the cultural weave then composing the known world, might be perceived as my exercising and venting extreme prejudice; one such essay written by me being "Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America." Certain as I am that for me to address Native Americans as "savages" would undoubtedly now cause most contemporary readers a discomfort, naught of that was true in my unenlightened day, when such sentiments were commonplace, if manifestly inexcusable from the modern vantage point. Quickly, however, and by your leave, permit me to offer for full exegesis the first lines of this oft misunderstood, and even more frequently mischaracterized, essay:
Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.
Perhaps if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude as to be without any rules of politeness; nor any so polite as to not have some remains of rudeness.
In the essay just referenced I later recount a meeting of a distinguished and well-educated Swedish minister and the chiefs of the Susquehanna tribe. The learned minister related to these Native American chiefs many of his religion's truths: Adam and Eve, an apple eaten by them to their peril, a woman untouched by man giving birth to a child, the coming of Christ, water miraculously converted to wine, one loaf multiplied to many, Christ raising himself from the dead, and so on and so forth numbering the manifold tenets of Christianity.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Poorer Richard's America"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Tom Blair.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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