User:Robbie/Franklin here: Difference between revisions

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This anecdote gets quoted often, especially in recent months. Here on this substack, we take it as a hint and wonder why Franklin might have added "if you can keep it" to the statement of fact that the new Constitution would establish a republic, not a monarchy. What was on his mind? Why did he think the people might someday loose their republic that they had just founded? We ask such questions, not expecting Franklin to answer, giving us knowledge about his thinking, which we cannot know.

We ask such questions wanting to construct in our own ideas about what Franklin might have had in mind, thereby wanting to achieve some insight or comprehension that will help us hone and expand what we actually think about our own present situations. Can we, informed and imaginative, a part of the American people circa 2025, better understand how to keep our republic by speculating about why Benjamin Franklin, just after he and his colleagues signed the draft Constitution, said that it established a republic, if you the people could keep it?

Of course, one brief anecdote will not sustain our speculative efforts. Franklin had a well-documented role in the actual signing of the draft Constitution on September 17th. The record of it may give us insight into how Franklin viewed the prospects for the government to be instituted by the new Constitution. Next to George Washington, a delegate from Virginia who presided over the Convention deliberations, Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania, had the most gravitas in public opinion. He was 81, suffering from the gout and the stone. Nevertheless, he participated in the deliberations with attentive reserve, an elder statesman who spoke up as needed to keep unity among the delegates, promoting compromises when serious deadlocks were arising. At the start the concluding session, Franklin gave a short speech to initiate the signing of the Constitution by the assembled delegates.

Let's attend to what he said, engaging both his words and noting important implications as we go along, but let's do that with our speculative efforts foremost in mind. Given Franklin's prominence as a Founding Father, the function of the speech on the culminating session of the Convention, and the mystique the Constitution gained in 19th and 20th century American history, interpreters have paid much attention to his words. But they have done so either by situating it in its immediate historical context, encouraging the few delegates whose support wavered to sign and to prepping all in a gameplan for the coming ratification debates, or by celebrating the basic collaborative commitment to the public good essential to American exceptionalism. Let's read the speech speculating that Franklin wrote it for us, we the people at an historical juncture in which the risk to the republic is actual that we may not keep it.

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 <p>This anecdote gets quoted often, especially in recent months. Here on this substack, we take it as a hint and wonder why Franklin might have added "if you can keep it" to the statement of fact that the new Constitution would establish a republic, not a monarchy. What was on his mind? Why did he think the people might someday loose their republic that they had just founded? We ask such questions, not expecting Franklin to answer, giving us knowledge about his thinking, which we cannot know.<p>
-</p>We ask such questions wanting to construct in our own ideas about what Franklin might have had in mind, thereby wanting to achieve some insight or comprehension that will help us hone and expand what we actually think about our own present situations. Can we, informed and imaginative, a part of the American people circa 2025, better understand how to keep our republic by speculating about why Benjamin Franklin, just after he and his colleagues signed the draft Constitution, said that it established a republic, if you the people could keep it?</p>
+<p>Of course, one brief anecdote will not sustain our speculative efforts. Franklin had a well-documented role in the actual signing of the draft Constitution on September 17th. The record of it may give us insight into how Franklin viewed the prospects for the government to be instituted by the new Constitution.  Next to George Washington, a delegate from Virginia who presided over the Convention deliberations, Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania, had the most gravitas in public opinion. He was 81, suffering from the gout and the stone. Nevertheless, he participated in the deliberations with attentive reserve, an elder statesman who spoke up as needed to keep unity among the delegates, promoting compromises when serious deadlocks were arising. At the start the concluding session, Franklin gave a short speech to initiate the signing of the Constitution by the assembled delegates.</p>
 <p>Let's attend to what he said, engaging both his words and noting important implications as we go along, but let's do that with our speculative efforts foremost in mind. Given Franklin's prominence as a Founding Father, the function of the speech on the culminating session of the Convention, and the mystique the Constitution gained in 19th and 20th century American history, interpreters have paid much attention to his words. But they have done so either by situating it in its immediate historical context, encouraging the few delegates whose support wavered to sign and to prepping all in a gameplan for the coming ratification debates, or by celebrating the basic collaborative commitment to the public good essential to American exceptionalism. Let's read the speech speculating that Franklin wrote it for us, we the people at an historical juncture in which the risk to the republic is actual that we may not keep it.</p>