Subject:
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Gore Vidal assesses the damage...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:42:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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362 times
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Uncensored Gore
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=48666
Franklin understood the American people better than the other three. Washington
and Jefferson were nobles ? slaveholders and plantation owners. Alexander
Hamilton married into a rich and powerful family and joined the upper classes.
Benjamin Franklin was pure middle class. In fact, he may have invented it for
Americans. Franklin saw danger everywhere. They all did. Not one of them liked
the Constitution. James Madison, known as the father of it, was full of
complaints about the power of the presidency. But they were in a hurry to get
the country going. Hence the great speech, which I quote at length in the book,
that Franklin, old and dying, had someone read for him. He said, I am in favor
of this Constitution, as flawed as it is, because we need good government and we
need it fast. And this, properly enacted, will give us, for a space of years,
such government.
But then, Franklin said, it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the
past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger
at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we
will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism ? the only
form of government suitable for such a people.
Do read for yourself the history of the “patriot” known as Alexander Hamilton.
Beyond writing some of the very excellent essays comprising “The Federalist
Papers” Hamilton was not a good guy -- not at all. Hamilton was probably as
close as we get to having an actual traitor to the spirit of a democratic
republic from someone critical to the creation of such a republic. Hamilton was
probably what you might get if Shrub Jr. actually had a brain.
-- Hop-Frog
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