QUAKERS -- INTRO | 2007-08-04
Before I get onto Quakers per se, it is important to realize how the YOUNGER Ben Franklin despised them. This discussion is a direct result of mderpelding's warning me not to get too soft, and the first point I want to make is how Franklin got soft, exactly what mderpelding warned me about.
I think mderpelding is psycho. Or do I mean psychic?
Oh, well, how the hell would ***I*** know the difference?
Ben Franklin's autobiography begins when, by my standards, he was still young. He was child of about sixty when the Revolution started and he stopped writing the book. The reason for this is kind of fun.
You see, his autobiography was written as advice to his (illegitimate) son. He stopped writing it when he went to the convention writing the Declaration of Independence and his son was the ousted Royal Governor of New Jersey and a dedicated Tory. His son's duty was to hang his father if he caught him.
This sort of thing tends to strain family bonds: "Nothing concentrates the mind like the realization that one is to be hanged on the morrow." Ben's side WON the Revolution, but he did not continue the book of advice to his son.
Which is why the Autobiography is so deliciously anti-Quaker. In his last years, Franklin became part of the Establishment. He sided with Hamilton against whites and he had not a bad word to say about the Penns who ruled Pennsylvania.
But the Autobiography ends when he still saw the Quakers naked. He talked about the time William Penn was on a ship with a younger Quaker. When the cry came that pirates were abut to attack the ship, the younger man volunteered to help fight, and Penn gave his blessing. Then it turned out that it wasn't a pirate after all.
So Penn and the other Quakers gave that young man hell for violating the creed of non-violence.
There were more Bronx cheers for the Quakers in the YOUNGER Franklin's autobiography. The fact is that no Quaker males ever lived who were not protected by MEN. So when the Scots-Irish who were in the mountains protecting Quakers from the Indians were attacked, the Quakers said, "So what's the big deal? Nothing to do with US."
Which is what another religious group in Philly says today.
But, as with Penn, it suddenly began to threaten THEM. So Franklin got through a resolution providing GRAIN, a word which could include gunpowder, to those protecting the Quakers.
You see, THEIR little asses were in danger, so pacifism be damned, even if, God forbid, it cost them TAXES..
More later, but Quakers make me SICK.