The Life of Ben Franklin - History Channel Attempts to Re-Write History

http://www.historychannel.com/global/feedback/faq.jsp?NetwCode=THC&level_1=nodes_38&level_2=nodes_71&level_3=nodes_86&x=27&y=19

I would like to express my displeasure with your recently broadcast program about the life of Benjamin Franklin.

One-hundred-five minutes into the 120 minute broadcast is when the comment of one of your "experts" completely ruined and brought into question the veracity of the entire program. The comments by this "expert" demonstrate either a historical error made the the HISTORY Channel, or an attempt by the HISTORY Channel to re-write history.

The "expert" in question was the 50-something year old gray-haired man wearing a gray suit and red tie. The topic being discussed at that moment in the program was the editing of the Declaration of Independence before the final draft was written and signed.

Of note was the instance where Franklin edited the original line "We hold these truths to be sacred," and replaced it with "We hold these truths to be self-evident,"

The "expert" makes the claim that this edit demonstrates how Benjamin Franklin (paraphrased), "believed so strongly in a separation of church and state that he wanted it to be stated in the Declaration of Independence that it was self-evident that our rights are given to us by the consent of the people and that religion holds no place in the matter."

The very document, indeed the very line of the very paragraph of the very document in question, completely debunks your "expert's" claim:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

In not-so-hard-to-understand language, the authors here declare that the proceeding TRUTHS are self-evident, meaning that they do not need validation nor do they need consent nor observation. The TRUTHS that are self-evident are "that all men are created equal," and, "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

It is beyond the need, authority and scope of the consent of the governed that we recognize the fact that we have Creator-granted rights. These rights are unalienable. Thus they cannot have been granted nor can they be un-granted by the consent of the governed.

I find it truly amazing that the HISTORY Channel would allow this completely erroneous statement by a presented "expert" to not only make the final cut of the program, but to not be refuted and corrected. In order for your channel to remain in the highest regard of your viewers who have come to rely on your accuracy and who have become habit to learning the "little known tidbits of history" from you, I would highly suggest that you immediately issue a correction, make it widely known, and edit the program to remedy this perversion of history.

Brown in such comments was distinguishing between
those who advanced the commonwealth and those with
servile talents -- but one of the two most famous
Americans of the eighteenth century had both. Benjamin
Franklin invented much, organized much, wrote much,
and did many other useful things. But as a young man he
also enjoyed London; he implies in his Autobiography,
which was very much a public relations document and
thus far removed from a Byrd-like secret diary, that his
sexual experiences were a poor man's equivalent of
Byrd's.99

http://www.olasky.com/Archives/liberty/12.pdf

chapter two, page 45
unquenchable desire to be at the center and not the
obscure periphery; as he wrote in a letter from
Pennsylvania to one English friend, printer William
Strahan, "We have seldom any Newes on our Side of the
Globe that can be entertaining to you or yours. All our
affairs are petit...[they] can seem but Trifles to you."100

...snip...

But Johnstone was not always accurate; for example, he
had one prominent member initiated six or seven years later
than he actually was.79 There were rumors but no proof that
Medmenham members practiced Satanism.80 What is
unmistakable is that at least twice a year for a decade political
dignitaries reveled for a fortnight at what was at least the
eighteenth century equivalent of parties at Hugh Hefner's
mansion: Medmenham members dressed as monks were
"drinking wine poured by naked girls."81 The appeal was that
offered in a note from one member, Thomas Potter, to John
Wilkes, who like most of the other members was married but
unwilling to give up promiscuity: "If you prefer young Women
and Whores to old Women and Wives... if Life and Spirit and
Wit and Humour and Gaity but above all if the heavenly inspir'd
Passion called LUST have not deserted you and left you a Prey
to Dullness and Imbecillity, hasten to Town...."82

chapter three page 37
The only American known to hasten to Medmenham was
Benjamin Franklin; there is no full documentation of his visits
until 1772, when the club was on its downside and Franklin was
a still hearty 66-year-old, but he may have been an early guest
and, some speculate, a member.83 Franklin had listened to
Whitefield's preaching and was almost swayed by it,84 but
ended up sticking with the peculiar combination of polytheism
and deism that he had developed: "I CONCEIVE then that the
INFINITE has created many Beings or Gods, vastly superior to
man."85 The Infinite was now out of the picture, but each
god, Franklin added, "has made for himself one glorious Sun,
attended with a beautiful and admirable System of Planets. It
is that particular wise and good God, who is the Author and
Owner of our System, that I propose for the Object of my
Praise and Adoration."86 Franklin's local deity was the sweet
God of which dreams are made: "he is pleas'd when he sees me
Happy. And since he has created many Things which seem
purely design'd for the Delight of Man, I believe he is not chapter three page 38
offended when he sees his Childen solace themselves in any
manner of pleasant Exercises..."87
What most people saw as lascivious conduct, Franklin
apparently viewed as a pleasant exercise; Franklin wrote in one
letter that "I am in [Dashwood's] house as much at my ease as
if it were my own; and the gardens are a paradise...."88
Franklin wrote in 1745, "Fair Venus calls; her voice obey;/ In
beauty's arms spend night and day./ The joys of love all joys
excel/ And loving's certainly doing well."89 Later in life, he was
Dashwood's guest for sixteen days when the "monks" were
meeting and making use of pornography-filled rooms
underground; Franklin during that time mentioned in a letter to
a Philadelphia friend his interest in the "whimsical" taste of
Dashwood that was "as evident below the earth as above it."90
Franklin praised Dashwood as a "a humane, liberal
reformer in Church affairs" who made "a handsome
contribution to the Unitarian Chapels," as did Franklin.91 He
even worked with Dashwood in an attempt to sap theological
orthodoxy by preparing An Abridgement of the Book of
Common Prayer: Dashwood revised the liturgy by dropping
Communion and anything else that emphasize man's sinfulness
chapter three page 39
and need for redemption, and Franklin took charge of the
catechism by eliminating all references to the divinity of Jesus,
to the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, and to the Ten
Commandments as commandments rather than suggestions.92
(The publication, however, "was never much noticed," Franklin
complained. "Some were given away, very few sold, and I
suppose the bulk became waste paper."93)
http://www.olasky.com/Archives/liberty/13.pdf

One of my favorite Franklin shorts...

THE EPHEMERA
An Emblem Of Human Life
By Benjamin Franklin (1778)

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopt a little in one of our walks, and staid some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues; my too great application of the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merits of two foreign musicians, one a COUSIN, the other a MOSCHETO; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people ! thought I, you live certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old grey-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish it's course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction.

I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor, in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in, for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general ! for, in politics, what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemerae will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas ! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name, they say, I shall leave behind me, and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to it's end, and be buried in universal ruin?"

To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemerae, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante.

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