Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin throughout his life would sign his name B. Franklin,
Speaker 1: Comma printer. He'd believed that being a leather agran, meaning
Speaker 1: somebody who owned a shop opened up in the morning,
Speaker 1: served people, that was the heart of who we were
Speaker 1: going to be as a nation. As a young printer,
Speaker 1: he had composed partly as a joke, an epithet that
Speaker 1: he thought could be used for himself.
Speaker 2: And it said, the body of B.
Speaker 1: Franklin Printer like the cover of an old book, its
Speaker 1: contents worn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding.
Speaker 1: Lies here for food for worms. But the book shall
Speaker 1: not be lost, for it will appear once more in
Speaker 1: a new and more elegant addition, revived and corrected by
Speaker 1: his author. It's a totally wonderful thing, a pilgrim making
Speaker 1: progress in the hands of a benevolent God. But of
Speaker 1: course Franklin was a simple person. Just before he died,
Speaker 1: he made something simpler that would be placed over his grave.
Speaker 1: There would just be a plain tombstone with the inscription
Speaker 1: Benjamin and Deborah Franklin.
Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin lived a life for the ages. He died
Speaker 3: at eighty four years old after what was a magnificently
Speaker 3: long life for his time, and in those years he
Speaker 3: lived at least five lives as a scientist, a writer,
Speaker 3: a businessman, a diplomat, and finally as a founder and
Speaker 3: framer of the United States. But how can we understand
Speaker 3: Franklin's legacy? How did you think about the wrongs he
Speaker 3: had made over a lifetime, and how did this moral
Speaker 3: evolution and the progression of his beliefs get woven into
Speaker 3: America's own moral fabric. In this final episode, Walter Isaacson
Speaker 3: details how Franklin's late in life actions, from ceding a
Speaker 3: nomination to a younger candidate to embracing abolition, defined both
Speaker 3: him and his newborn country.
Speaker 1: When George Washington arrives for the Constitutional Convention, one of
Speaker 1: the first things he does is he has a dinner
Speaker 1: at Franklin's house. They brag out casks of ale. Franklin
Speaker 1: has built this new house on Market Street in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and Franklin would make this grand and every day to
Speaker 1: the Constitutional Convention. Because he has gout and he has
Speaker 1: trouble walking, they carry Franklin the few blocks from Market
Speaker 1: Street to what we now call Independence Hall on sort
Speaker 1: of a chair carried by four prisoners from the jail.
Speaker 1: The only other person who could have possibly been the
Speaker 1: president of the Convention and thus likely to be the
Speaker 1: first president besides Washington would have been Benjamin Franklin. But
Speaker 1: he's pushing eighty then, and as we know today, that's
Speaker 1: a bit old to be president, maybe, and so he
Speaker 1: asks for permission to be the one who nominates Washington.
Speaker 1: The fundamental thing to understand about the Constitutional Convention was
Speaker 1: that they'd gotten it wrong the first time around the
Speaker 1: Articles of Confederation, and they hadn't created really a central government.
Speaker 1: It was just thirteen different states that were confederated with
Speaker 1: each other but not doing well, and so they couldn't
Speaker 1: do things like figure out tariff so tray that easily.
Speaker 1: And they have to go back to the idea that
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin originally proposed in the seventeen fifties, the Albany
Speaker 1: Plan of Union, where you have a central government with
Speaker 1: a congress that can do taxation. So what they end
Speaker 1: up at the Constitutional Convention is something that Franklin had
Speaker 1: pretty much proposed thirty years earlier, which is a federal
Speaker 1: system of government.
Speaker 3: And so they're still leaning on his ideas but how
Speaker 3: was he viewed.
Speaker 2: At the time.
Speaker 1: He's the wise person who comes in, but to be honest,
Speaker 1: he's a little bit doddering. He tells long stories. At
Speaker 1: the convention. He makes proposals sometimes that people can't quite
Speaker 1: figure out is he totally serious about that. Famously, he
Speaker 1: makes a proposal that they should open with prayers each day,
Speaker 1: which was somewhat unusual because Franklin wasn't all that religious.
Speaker 1: He was a deist to believe that the Creator, but
Speaker 1: not a god who intervened in our affairs. And yet
Speaker 1: in that speech he uses a phrase from the Bible.
Speaker 1: If a sparrow can't fall without the Good Lord knowing,
Speaker 1: then how can an empire arise?
Speaker 2: And I think it was.
Speaker 1: Mainly because he wanted to push a little bit of humility.
Speaker 1: We all had to keep in mind that there were
Speaker 1: powers greater than ourselves, and so even though he wasn't
Speaker 1: always taken that seriously, I think there were times when
Speaker 1: he set the mood.
Speaker 3: Including bringing people from the convention to his house to
Speaker 3: describe what he was doing there and what role that played.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at the US Capitol now,
Speaker 1: there's beautiful scenes painted in one of the rooms of
Speaker 1: the Founding of America, and one of the ad is
Speaker 1: a picture in the backyard of Benjamin Franklin under the
Speaker 1: shade of the tree, where he's trying to calm things down.
Speaker 1: Franklin always believed that one of his roles was calming
Speaker 1: royaled waters. And he even had a little scientific trick
Speaker 1: that he learned, which is how a small layer of
Speaker 1: oil on the surface of water makes it calmer. And
Speaker 1: so in his walking stick he would put a little
Speaker 1: cruet of oil in one of the chambers and have
Speaker 1: a little button. So if he stood in front of
Speaker 1: Clapham Pond, say in England or river, he could wave
Speaker 1: his walking stick and then secretly press a button and
Speaker 1: the waters would get calmer for him. That became a metaphor.
Speaker 1: At the Constitutional Convention, he played that role he had
Speaker 1: played his whole life of trying to temper people's passions
Speaker 1: calm things down. You need passionate people like a Sam
Speaker 1: Adams to get you into a revolution, but you also
Speaker 1: need somebody who spends his life figuring out how do
Speaker 1: you calm wild waters? And at the Convention he was
Speaker 1: particularly good at bringing contending people to his backyard, sitting
Speaker 1: under the shade of the tree, telling stories, sometimes pointless stories,
Speaker 1: but he would calm down the passions.
Speaker 3: In the first episode, we heard about how Franklin's scientific
Speaker 3: background taught him that imperfection shouldn't stop one from moving forward,
Speaker 3: for example, voting for the Constitution, because the process of
Speaker 3: experimentation involved continual improvement upon an idea. Walter noted that
Speaker 3: his vote to move the imperfect Constitution into action was
Speaker 3: also the result of a long life and a healthy
Speaker 3: dose of humility.
Speaker 1: He said, when we were young tradesmen here in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and we had a joint of wood or a table
Speaker 1: that didn't fully hold together, you take a little from
Speaker 1: one side and shave a little from the other, until
Speaker 1: you had a joint that would hold together for centuries.
Speaker 1: And so too we hear this convention must each part
Speaker 1: was some of our demands. There were things that he
Speaker 1: believed in, such as a single chamber legislature instead of
Speaker 1: a House and a Senate, but he changes his mind.
Speaker 1: He ends up proposing the compromise of having a House
Speaker 1: of representatives as proportional votes versus a Senate in which
Speaker 1: the equal votes per state, an idea that the Connecticut
Speaker 1: delegation proposed had gone down in flames. But when Franklin
Speaker 1: does it in the detailed way that he proposed it
Speaker 1: and it passed, he gets the balance just right. He
Speaker 1: gave a speech he said, I'm not sure I'll ever
Speaker 1: approve it, for having lived long experienced many instances of
Speaker 1: being obliged to change my opinion on important subjects which
Speaker 1: I thought I was right but found out otherwise. It's
Speaker 1: that notion that you don't have to go to war
Speaker 1: and go to battle over every single thing. You should
Speaker 1: be willing to say I might be wrong on these things,
Speaker 1: I might have some humility. Let all compromise and see
Speaker 1: if we can agree on things.
Speaker 3: That seems like a manifestation of his experience and also
Speaker 3: of his pr mastery and sort of understanding that the
Speaker 3: Constitution is also something you have to sell to people.
Speaker 3: You have to sell it as an imperfect document, and
Speaker 3: to get ahead of that and say, yes, you will
Speaker 3: see imperfections at it, but it's the best thing we're
Speaker 3: going to get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the best thing that can come out of
Speaker 1: human hand. One of the things he learned early in
Speaker 1: life was the importance of humility, or is he sometimes
Speaker 1: put it at least having the pretense of humility. You
Speaker 1: might pause for a second and say, well, I could
Speaker 1: be wrong about that. Let me indulge the wisdom of
Speaker 1: people around me and see if we can come to
Speaker 1: an accommodation. And that's not very heroic. That doesn't get
Speaker 1: you on cable TV these days, fighting for the last
Speaker 1: perfect thing you want. But it's the way democracies get made.
Speaker 1: Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make
Speaker 1: great democracies.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure we don't pass over this moment,
Speaker 3: that the idea that Franklin was the only viable candidate
Speaker 3: to be the leader of the early United States other
Speaker 3: than Washington, and he said I removed myself from this competition.
Speaker 3: Did that echo come up for you at all when
Speaker 3: Biden did the same. I mean, people have pulled out
Speaker 3: for different reasons, but has anyone done it in that
Speaker 3: explicit way.
Speaker 1: Well, both Franklin and Washington, there's a lot of credit
Speaker 1: in their careers. Franklin during the Constitutional Convention realizes that
Speaker 1: he's too old to take charge and be the first
Speaker 1: president and wants Washington to do it. Then, of course, famously,
Speaker 1: at the end of Washington's second term, he says, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna step aside. I'm going to be like Cincinnatus,
Speaker 1: the old Roman, and go back to my farm. That
Speaker 1: notion of voluntarily forsaking power is at the heart of
Speaker 1: what a democracy is, a peaceful transfer of power and
Speaker 1: people who are in it not for themselves and for power,
Speaker 1: but for the democracy itself.
Speaker 2: You see that in.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, and then you see it again in George Washington,
Speaker 1: And nowadays it's important to do what Biden did at
Speaker 1: times and step aside and on certainly when we look
Speaker 1: at our elections, to believe in the peaceful transfer of
Speaker 1: power when.
Speaker 2: We come back.
Speaker 3: Franklin addresses the biggest mistake on his life's list of
Speaker 3: errata and shows us that you can change for the
Speaker 3: better at any age. So after the Constitutional Convention, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just extraordinary how long he's lived and how much
Speaker 3: he's accomplished at this point. But there's sort of one
Speaker 3: more turn left for him, in a sense, his becoming
Speaker 3: an abolitionist.
Speaker 1: Throughout his life, he had kept this ledger of errors
Speaker 1: he had made and how he had rectified. It begins
Speaker 1: with him running away from his intenture to his brother.
Speaker 1: He rectifies it by taking care of his brother's son
Speaker 1: after his brother dies.
Speaker 2: Well, the last.
Speaker 1: Great errata, more than an erato, a moral deep laughed,
Speaker 1: was tolerating slavery. Franklin was not as advanced as Don
Speaker 1: Adams and others were. He's certainly more advanced than Jefferson
Speaker 1: and some of the Virginians were. And then he becomes
Speaker 1: truly at the forefront when he takes over the Society
Speaker 1: for the Abolition of slavery and says, not only do
Speaker 1: we have to abolish slavery, we have to have all
Speaker 1: sorts of actions that will bring freed slaves into the
Speaker 1: educated and working mainstream of our middle class. And he
Speaker 1: writes very long in detailed methods of making sure that
Speaker 1: we get the formerly enslaved people into an equal position
Speaker 1: in society, to find employment, to find internships. And it
Speaker 1: may have not been the most profound ethical theory ever,
Speaker 1: but it was a very practical one, and it was
Speaker 1: totally intertwined to democracy, to believing more than any of
Speaker 1: the other founders, he believed in the wisdom of the
Speaker 1: common person and that we should have as much democracy
Speaker 1: as possible. And so at the end of his life
Speaker 1: he starts writing these tracks about how bad slavery is.
Speaker 1: And just as his very first published writings were done
Speaker 1: as hoaxes under a pseudonym Silence do Good Letters when
Speaker 1: he was a teenager, his last great publication was once
Speaker 1: again a hoax under a pseudonym, which was a letter
Speaker 1: from the Divan of Algiers in which he's talking in
Speaker 1: the voice of an Arab leader defending the right to
Speaker 1: enslave captured Christians. And what he's doing is eviscerating the
Speaker 1: arguments made by some of the Southern senators against the
Speaker 1: petition he had presented for the abolition of slavery.
Speaker 3: And I feel like there's two questions in that evolution.
Speaker 3: I think people today would ask why did it take
Speaker 3: till the end of his life for him to get there?
Speaker 3: And what enabled him to evolve in that way?
Speaker 1: Well, Franklin often of He wrote one essay early on
Speaker 1: which was not very good and was anti German, anti immigrant,
Speaker 1: also showed not much sympathy for the enslaved. And then
Speaker 1: he revised it and he said, I had a natural
Speaker 1: proclivity for my own race. But you may think, why
Speaker 1: is that? Why didn't I question it? Why did I
Speaker 1: feel this way? And One of the things that helps
Speaker 1: him on his evolution is he does get involved in
Speaker 1: these schools for the education of the children of freed
Speaker 1: slaves in the seventeen forties seventeen fifties, and he's amazed
Speaker 1: at the power of education. And he writes about the
Speaker 1: great minds of these young children and how well they do,
Speaker 1: and he says that helped change my mind. Franklin said,
Speaker 1: my morality is a simple and a pragmatic one. The
Speaker 1: best way we can serve our creator is dedicate your
Speaker 1: life to making things better for the people around you,
Speaker 1: for serving other people, and to give opportunities for each
Speaker 1: person to rise in the world the way he did.
Speaker 1: One of the beauties of Benjamin Franklin is that he's
Speaker 1: part of the moral arc of America. He's continually improving
Speaker 1: as we are as a nation, and usually a slight
Speaker 1: bit ahead.
Speaker 3: And there's something about doing that into your seventies and
Speaker 3: eighties that also implies that it never stops.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he felt he was on a never ending
Speaker 1: quest for self improvement, self knowledge, for learning things, but
Speaker 1: also on a never ending quest to bend the moral
Speaker 1: arc of his life towards better things. And I think
Speaker 1: that should be a template for our country. That notion
Speaker 1: of continuing self improvement of both ourselves in our civic
Speaker 1: lives is one of the important things that Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: teaches us.
Speaker 3: This is something that I feel as a little bit
Speaker 3: in the air right now when national politics is so
Speaker 3: divisive that people will say, focus on your community, focus
Speaker 3: on the people around you. And Franklin did focus on
Speaker 3: the most national politics, but it feels like he built
Speaker 3: his outlook around his community and making changes in his
Speaker 3: local environment.
Speaker 1: Yes, he felt that politics would work best from the
Speaker 1: ground up when you start with, as he put it,
Speaker 1: little things like keeping the streets swept. You see why
Speaker 1: we all have to work together at the community level.
Speaker 1: And he felt that would be a model for how
Speaker 1: a big politics would work. That we would all understand
Speaker 1: what can we do in a practical way to give
Speaker 1: everybody an opportunity to have a good life. Education was
Speaker 1: very much a private thing people could afford, it would pay,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, we have to have an academy
Speaker 1: for the education of youths because education is not just
Speaker 1: an individual benefit. It benefits the whole community. Likewise, fire protection,
Speaker 1: all the things that would hold a community together. He said,
Speaker 1: let's just find practical ways to do it rather than
Speaker 1: politicizing it. We're still fighting about that. Well, should there
Speaker 1: be national health, should there be public health things? Should
Speaker 1: we have insurance associations? And Franklin always felt that you
Speaker 1: could give people a sense of individualism but also a
Speaker 1: sense that they could work together as a community.
Speaker 3: One of the things that you return to in the
Speaker 3: book is his comfort with democracy. And he's more comfortable
Speaker 3: with democracy than some of the other founders. But now
Speaker 3: we have some questions about too much democracy, too much populism.
Speaker 3: Modern political figures take from Franklin. He did resist pure populism.
Speaker 3: There was a paston Boy's Revolt at one point, it's
Speaker 3: almost like the Tea Party re volt, in which it
Speaker 3: was anti immigrant and they were marching to Philadelphia, and
Speaker 3: he helped raise a force that would stop them. And
Speaker 3: he realized it was up to each one of us,
Speaker 3: all of us, to have both a celebration of democracy
Speaker 3: but also the civic attributes, the feel for the common good,
Speaker 3: the feel for the security of our society that would
Speaker 3: help protect it from populist or for that matter, authoritarian
Speaker 3: or aristocratic excesses.
Speaker 1: He didn't care for a mob No, he really didn't
Speaker 1: like mob rule. Even the Boston Tea Party that kind
Speaker 1: of appalled him, because he was at heart somebody who
Speaker 1: wanted moderation. When you put together the sense of founding
Speaker 1: this country, you need the most passionate people, and you
Speaker 1: have Samuel Adams and John Adams and really smart people
Speaker 1: like Jefferson and Hamilton, and people of high rectitude like Washington.
Speaker 1: But it's also useful to have the Franklins who know
Speaker 1: how to pull people together. And well, maybe they're two ingratiating,
Speaker 1: but it could be worse things in life.
Speaker 3: One of the ways people perceive him is through the
Speaker 3: eyes of these sort of maxims and industry, and it
Speaker 3: can make them sound a bit like a schoolmarm, like
Speaker 3: a person who's always going around instructing people about how
Speaker 3: they should behave And yet you look at his relationships
Speaker 3: and the clubs and the communities that he built around
Speaker 3: himself wherever he went, how did he manage to sort
Speaker 3: of pull people into his orbit.
Speaker 1: When growing up in Puritan Boston, it was a very
Speaker 1: dogmatic time. Things were handed down. The preachers told you
Speaker 1: what was right and wrong. The opposite for him was
Speaker 1: being open minded not being sure of yourself until you
Speaker 1: test it all of your theories, and that means that
Speaker 1: as you go through life, what looks acceptable is no
Speaker 1: longer acceptable because you've tested it a bit more.
Speaker 3: Did that in any way draw you to them? You
Speaker 3: don't strike me as extremely dogmatic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not very dogmatic. I was a journalist for many,
Speaker 1: many years, and I tried.
Speaker 2: Not to be partisan.
Speaker 1: I tried to be open minded about everybody I covered,
Speaker 1: from Ronald Reagan to Ted Kennedy. So Ben Franklin appealed
Speaker 1: to me. I think we've lost that ability in our
Speaker 1: democracy to be as open minded as we should be.
Speaker 1: People grab on to a dogmatic view of the world,
Speaker 1: to their preferred cable channel or their end of the
Speaker 1: talk radio dial. With the evidence they get reinforces their
Speaker 1: own dogma, rather than being open to all ideas, all
Speaker 1: evidence the way Benjamin Franklin was.
Speaker 3: And if that open mindedness feels a little bit like
Speaker 3: an endangered species right now, do you have a sense
Speaker 3: of what the steps would be to try to bring
Speaker 3: it back.
Speaker 1: I think Benjamin Franklin would realize that we all have
Speaker 1: a shared set of values at the local level, that
Speaker 1: our potholes and dirty streets aren't partisan one way or
Speaker 1: the other, and so I think he would want to
Speaker 1: help restore democracy neighborhood by neighborhood by having more civic
Speaker 1: associations to support their local hospital or their local firefighters,
Speaker 1: just the way he did. I think the poison and
Speaker 1: partisanship in our national politics has seat down to some
Speaker 1: extent at the local level. I think Franklin would say
Speaker 1: it could also work in reverse. We focus on what's
Speaker 1: really good for our neighborhoods and our communities, then we
Speaker 1: can leach the poison out of the national politics at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 2: When we come back.
Speaker 3: We read Benjamin Franklin's reviews. Is there anything that surprised
Speaker 3: you over the years since the book came out in
Speaker 3: terms of what people find in it or what they
Speaker 3: pull out of it and express to you.
Speaker 1: One of things that surprises me a bit is that
Speaker 1: the most passionate people who are the most partisan sometimes
Speaker 1: embrace the book. Elon Mosk thought it was his favorite,
Speaker 1: said he loved the book, And sometimes I feel like saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: read it again, because it's not just about following your passion.
Speaker 1: It's combining your passion with a little bit of humility,
Speaker 1: so that you try to understand other people's passions as
Speaker 1: well and find the common ground.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's the fatal flo on Benjamin Franklin. He gave
Speaker 3: us too much to work with, too many things for
Speaker 3: you to grab onto to make your own Franklin philosophy.
Speaker 3: You mentioned not canonizing Benjamin Franklin, and this actually brings
Speaker 3: to mind. There was one point where he's in a
Speaker 3: kind of gloomy state of mind and his friend's a
Speaker 3: doctor and he writes, do you please yourself with the
Speaker 3: fancy that you're doing good. You're mistaken. Half the lives
Speaker 3: you save are not worth saving, which does point to
Speaker 3: that he had complex moods just like anyone else. He
Speaker 3: wasn't just a sunny, happy, go lucky guy, right.
Speaker 1: There was at times a little bit of gloominess in him,
Speaker 1: at times, some anger in him, but he knew how
Speaker 1: to channel it. He wasn't a brooding sort. And in general,
Speaker 1: his optimism and it's just his cheery nature and his
Speaker 1: desire to please people help define who he is.
Speaker 2: And he was a detailed person.
Speaker 1: From his earliest civic assotion ciations to his negotiations in France.
Speaker 1: He would micromanage every little bit of the ammunition and
Speaker 1: the loans, and when he came up with plans for
Speaker 1: things to be, sometimes twenty or thirty pages of how
Speaker 1: it should work. Because while a lot of people think
Speaker 1: God is in the great vision, he also realized that
Speaker 1: God was in the details. That it really mattered that
Speaker 1: you become geeky, that you put down every rule and regulation,
Speaker 1: whether it's for how should the Academy of Youth in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia teach swimming? To how should the French resupply our ammunition.
Speaker 3: It's almost like everything was an invention. The world was
Speaker 3: there to be invented exactly.
Speaker 1: He was a tinkerer and then an inventor, and then
Speaker 1: just somebody who was ingenius in understanding how details wove
Speaker 1: together to form the whole, and whether it's the flu
Speaker 1: of the Franklin stove and how much it should be heated,
Speaker 1: or whether it was the details of the Treaty of
Speaker 1: Alliance with France. He liked to devise things. He liked
Speaker 1: to be involved with the invention of things.
Speaker 3: It's clear that Walter Isaacson admires Franklin, and we had
Speaker 3: talked about him sharing an anti dogmatic view of the
Speaker 3: world with his subject, but I wondered if they shared
Speaker 3: also a quality common among people who write about the.
Speaker 2: World for a living.
Speaker 3: You describe Franklin as graced and afflicted with the traits
Speaker 3: so common to journalists, especially ones who have read Swift
Speaker 3: and Addison One's too often of wanting to participate in
Speaker 3: the world while also remaining a detached observer. And now
Speaker 3: I wonder how much were you writing about yourself?
Speaker 2: Oh? Totally.
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things when you're a journalist,
Speaker 1: like I've been most of my career, is you realize
Speaker 1: you're not in the arena and you become a bit detached.
Speaker 1: You're just watching other people do things, perhaps even trying
Speaker 1: to have a veneer of objectivity, as if you don't
Speaker 1: have a dog in that hunt.
Speaker 2: You're just observing.
Speaker 1: And I think there's something yearning that we have, or
Speaker 1: I had in that position of maybe I should be
Speaker 1: in the arena and maybe, like Addison's Weft or Franklin,
Speaker 1: maybe now should get more involved in things. So I
Speaker 1: understood Franklin's evolution from being a humorous, wry poor Richard
Speaker 1: Almanac writing observer of the foibles of the elite to
Speaker 1: being somebody who then went into politics and statecraft.
Speaker 3: It kind of brings to mind something from your own
Speaker 3: story when you moved from Washington back to New Orleans,
Speaker 3: and then later you got involved in post Katrina New
Speaker 3: Orleans and tried to help the city recover. And that
Speaker 3: feels very Ben Franklin to me, getting involved in your
Speaker 3: local community. I'm wondering if that move felt that way
Speaker 3: to you, to try to return to what you can
Speaker 3: affect in the world around you.
Speaker 1: Yes, I knew that I was never going to run
Speaker 1: for national office or run for president and do things,
Speaker 1: but I figured, how do you then get more involved?
Speaker 1: And then Katrina happened, and my really beloved Tone Down
Speaker 1: was flooded, my childhood home was flooded, and I went
Speaker 1: back and I became the vice chairman of the Louisiana
Speaker 1: Recovery Authority, and then.
Speaker 2: Moved back to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people will look at our current political climb
Speaker 1: and say, I've got to run for Senate or something.
Speaker 1: But I think the way most of us can do
Speaker 1: it is say, let me be involved in the things
Speaker 1: that make our civic life better. I think we can
Speaker 1: all get more engaged in the civic life of our community,
Speaker 1: which is the way Benjamin Franklin started his road to
Speaker 1: defining American democracy. And even if we're not going to
Speaker 1: run for Senate or run for president, that's the pathway
Speaker 1: to applying the life lessons from ben Franklin to the
Speaker 1: needs we now have in a troubled democracy.
Speaker 2: I think part of.
Speaker 3: What's so interesting about Franklin is that he seems to
Speaker 3: go in and out of fashion.
Speaker 1: Franklin's age of Enlightenment, which was very practical, very empirical,
Speaker 1: very scientific, gets replaced in the early eighteen hundreds by
Speaker 1: an era that values romanticism more than rationality, and so
Speaker 1: Franklin a bit goes out of style. The romantic poets
Speaker 1: make fun of him. I think it was the poet
Speaker 1: John Keats said that he was just a man of
Speaker 1: thrifty maxims. Franklin was and never a sublime man. But
Speaker 1: I think we see the pendulum swinging back and forth
Speaker 1: through American history. But the middle class values of industry
Speaker 1: and honesty and frugality, and of civic mindedness and having
Speaker 1: a local police and fire departments that are supported the
Speaker 1: these are not lowly mundane values. These are fundamental values
Speaker 1: to keeping a democracy on an even deeal.
Speaker 3: And in his own time among some of his peers,
Speaker 3: Franklin was never really in fashion. John Adams, the second
Speaker 3: President of the United States, fellow author of the Declaration
Speaker 3: of Independence, and sharer of a hotel room, while having
Speaker 3: a cold thought Franklin might be too open minded.
Speaker 1: John Adams had been his antagonist, a friend and sort
Speaker 1: of a rival for power throughout the Revolution. And Adams
Speaker 1: was a very passionate religious person, and initially he looked
Speaker 1: down on Franklin's sort of vague tolerance of all religions.
Speaker 1: But eventually, after Franklin dies, even John Adams mellows on him.
Speaker 1: He realizes that there's something beautiful about Franklin's outlook. Franklin
Speaker 1: believed in a God that created everybody, and he said,
Speaker 1: if that's what the Good Lord did, then everybody is
Speaker 1: worth equal respect. And so the best way to be religious,
Speaker 1: the best way to serve the Lord, is to be
Speaker 1: tolerant of different religions in different ethnic groups. That notion
Speaker 1: of religious toleration initially offended deeply spiritual religious people. There
Speaker 1: was one historian, Charles Angoff, who makes fun of Franklin
Speaker 1: and says all that he really contributed to America was
Speaker 1: this sort of good natured religious tolerance. What heavens, that
Speaker 1: is the essential thing that America gave to the world.
Speaker 1: In a period in which most countries had established religions
Speaker 1: and would fight religious wars. Country that not only tolerated,
Speaker 1: but respected each person's right to speak and to worship
Speaker 1: as they pleased.
Speaker 2: This was a.
Speaker 1: Whole new thing. And during his lifetime Franklin donated to
Speaker 1: the building fund of each and every church built in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: And one point to the new hall that was being
Speaker 1: built next Independence Hall, which was for visiting preachers. He said,
Speaker 1: if the muffed eye of Constantinople were to send somebody
Speaker 1: here to teach us ismam, we should listen and we
Speaker 1: should learn. And on his deathbad he was the largest
Speaker 1: individual contributor to make the Israel Synagogue, the first synagogue
Speaker 1: built in Philadelphia. The concept of good natured religious tolerance
Speaker 1: was actually no small advance for civilization back then in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. It was the greatest of contributions to
Speaker 1: rise not only from the Enlightenment, but from the founding
Speaker 1: of America, the nation not as a tribe, but as
Speaker 1: out of many, one epluribus union, and that notion that
Speaker 1: people of all different faiths, of all different backgrounds get
Speaker 1: to come here and get to be equal citizens. That
Speaker 1: tolerance and respect for different ways of doing things becomes
Speaker 1: America's gift.
Speaker 3: At its best. But it has to keep finding its
Speaker 3: best over and over again.
Speaker 1: It does, especially now when we're falling prey to some
Speaker 1: of the sectarian intolerance, the tribalism, even the nationalism that
Speaker 1: sort of says we don't like people from different cultures
Speaker 1: coming here. That is anathema to the democracy that Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin and others created two hundred and fifty three hundred
Speaker 1: years ago. When Franklin was dying, he helped organize the
Speaker 1: preyed for Independence Day, and he helped make sure that
Speaker 1: it was left by all the different denominations so it
Speaker 1: could show this idea of religious tolerance. And so too,
Speaker 1: when he died, every preacher, minister and preach in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: linked arms with the rabbi of the Jews and march
Speaker 1: with his casket to the grave. That what he was
Speaker 1: fighting for back then, and that's of course what was
Speaker 1: still fighting for in the world today.
Speaker 3: This show is based on the writing and research of
Speaker 3: Walter Isaacson, so stedd by me Evan Ratliffe, produced, mixed
Speaker 3: and sound design by Anna Rubinova. Adam Bozarth is our
Speaker 3: consulting producer. Lizzie Jacobs is our editor. Social media by
Speaker 3: Dara Potts.
Speaker 2: The show was.
Speaker 3: Engineered at CDM Sound Studios from iHeart Podcast. The executive
Speaker 3: producers are Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry. For Kaleidoscope, it
Speaker 3: was executive produced by Mangeshtetikadur, with an assist from Other
Speaker 3: Volition Kostaslinos and Kate Osborn. Special thanks to Amanda Urban,
Speaker 3: Bob Pittman, Connell Byrne, Will Pearson, Nikki Etoor, Kerrie Lieberman,
Speaker 3: Nathan Otowski and Ali Gavin. And if you like podcasts
Speaker 3: about inventions what they mean for humanity, check out my
Speaker 3: other show, shell Game, about how it created an AI
Speaker 3: clone and set it loose on the world. It's at
Speaker 3: Shellgame dot co. And for more shows from Kaleidoscope, be
Speaker 3: sure to visit Kaleidoscope dot NYC.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening.