Any student of American history at some point wonders what the Founding Fathers would think of today’s United States. Now, one of the most distinctive founders is back and he has a lot to say – or at least author Tom Blair does on his behalf.

In “Poorer Richard’s America: What Would Ben Say?” Blair gets in touch with the Ben Franklin of the beyond and leaves no facet of modern American life untouched. From family life to the state of the economy and feuding political factions, Franklin has plenty to say. He’s pleased overall, but is not without some criticism.

The book is intended to be a “Poor Richard’s Almanac” for the modern American, offering proverbial wisdom both old and new. The advice is dispersed in 39 essays written in a voice reminiscent of Franklin’s writing for the almanac, and the advice proves that many of Franklin’s clever quips are as apt today as they were during his lifetime.

The economy is a frequent topic of discussion in the book. Franklin warns against the excessive creation of federal programs, with Blair borrowing a 1745 Poor Richard’s proverb: “Beware of the little expenses, small leaks will sink the greatest ships.”

Blair’s Franklin has learned a lot since he died in 1790. He’s watched the events of the past 220 years unfold, both in the United States and the rest of the world. He’s read Darwin and jokes about Playboy and has apparently been to Las Vegas, albeit in spectral form.

This up-to-speed Franklin is quick to comment on modern patriotism and is distressed by comments that immigrants to this country are not “real Americans.” This mentality, Blair writes, breeds prejudice and discrimination and will only lead to anger among citizens.

“If as the hangman adjusts the noose around your neck, you proclaim loudly, ‘My only regret is that I have but one live to give for my country,’ you may then lay claim to the mantle of Real American,” Franklin notes.

But Franklin’s comments go beyond the political sphere.

While he’s impressed with the wealth of knowledge available via the Internet and the seemingly limitless possibilities with computers, he worries that today’s Americans aren’t thinking enough. As that chapter’s title puts it, “information caressed is knowledge … information churned is clutter.”

From his perspective, we use computers to discover random facts or share our “random, wandering thoughts.” The devices have shortened person-to-person interactions, shifting what is considered intelligent from what is well-thought-out to what is delivered most quickly.

Some of the comments made by Blair’s take on Franklin are of the tough-love variety. He’s quick to point out where he thinks political leadership and social change have gone wrong – and he’s not afraid to speculate as to what could happen if they do not shape up.

Despite his criticism, Blair’s Franklin concludes by reminding readers that the United States was founded on the belief that the country’s power is in their hands, and they shouldn’t hesitate to speak up.

Though it is impossible to know what Franklin really would say about today’s United States, Blair’s interpretation is witty and often thought-provoking. It may be presumptuous of Blair to speak on the Founding Father’s behalf, but in many ways he says what others haven’t – or maybe just what people haven’t heard.

Perhaps Ben Franklin is just the person we need to hear say it.

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Review by Edward Morris

Ben Franklin is worried. “My dear America may well have reached its majestic zenith,” he frets, “thus being poised to begin its slide from grace.” But the sage of Philadelphia is too constitutionally optimistic to succumb to despair. While he doesn’t propose an overall program to save the republic, he does offer some more of the common sense ideas he first put forth in his various editions of Poor Richard’s Almanack. Persnickety critics may kvetch that Franklin has been dead for 220 years and thus has no business sticking his disembodied nose into our peculiarly 21st-century problems. But they have not reckoned with the time-bridging skills of author Tom Blair, who channels herein both Franklin’s can-do spirit and his epigrammatic literary style.

Before he assumed this Founding Father mantle, Blair founded several companies, the most recent of which is Catalyst Health Solutions. This may help explain his skepticism toward the recently enacted national health-care bill, which his alter ego labels “both anemic and misengineered.” His is not a broadside, however. It’s more a probe into human nature and political realities.

Chief among our faux Franklin’s concerns are America’s enormous and escalating debt, the power Congress accords lobbyists and the privileged lifestyle (not a word he would use) that saps the strength and resolve of American citizens. He calls for a constitutional amendment that would require taxpayers to fund congressional political campaigns and thus do away with lobbyists. (After all, he notes, taxpayers already subsidize lobbyists—and at considerably greater expense.) As did his flesh-and-blood predecessor, the new Ben sometimes treads the peripheral. He devotes two pages to arguing that flag-burning should not be a First Amendment right—as if that activity has ever posed a danger—and he drolly asserts that the moment of conception occurs when a suitor “pulls the cork from the second bottle of Madeira.”

Like its 18th-century model, Poorer Richard’s America is fun to read and moderately thought-provoking. The sentences are straightforward and pithy, and the tone is gentle, even when it’s chiding something. Note the price “Ben” affixes to this book. Dead or alive, he always has a gimmick.

http://www.bookpage.com/books-10013703-Poorer-Richard%27s-America

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Would they be astounded? Shocked? Disappointed? Of course, no one knows because such a wish can never come true … until now.

I just finished a very good book entitled “Poorer Richard’s America”, subtitled “What would Ben say”. The “Ben” in question is Benjamin Franklin and the author, Tom Blair, perfectly – at least in my opinion – captures Franklin’s voice. He also captures the common sense and logic which made Poor Richard’s Almanac such a hit during Franklin’s time.

So, given the intriguing premise that Ben Franklin was going to discuss our America, the book was irresistible. From culture to politics to philosophy, this series of short essays captured in 39 chapters discusses most of the burning political issues of today with brilliant discussion of both the past and the present. In fact, it is the use of the past while pointing out the present problems that makes the book so compelling.

For instance, a simple example grounded in our US history helps explain our problems in seeding democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And why was Iraq actually easier than Afghanistan. Blair’s Franklin harkens us back to the founding of the country and Jamestown as well. Jamestown, some 150 years before our Constitution was ratified, was our first settlement in the “New World”. They almost starved to death and died out. Franklin wonders where on the priority list of Jamestown the establishment of democracy would have ranked. He supposes not very high. In fact, until the priorities of food, shelter and security were satisfied, and a modicum of prosperity established, “democracy as a form of self-governance” probably wouldn’t even gain a passing thought.

In Iraq it was much easier, in relative terms, to satisfy those basic priorities than it is in Afghanistan, where they still haven’t been satisfied. Of course there are other cultural problems as well, but I think the basic point makes sense. And it is that sort of easily understood “sense” that makes the book so compelling.

One other observation I’ll pass you way that resonated with me had to do, of all things, with reality TV. I find it to be a horrific form of entertainment. Blair’s Franklin agrees:

“Since I opened this diminutive essay by referencing television, let me return to the great giver of light and noise. For many Americans, television has become both a pacifier and a false voice of self-worth. I came, after much hesitancy, to this conclusion while considering the great Colosseum in Rome. A Colosseum where, for the morbid enjoyment of the masses, humanity was discarded and humans were first degraded, then slain. Many reality TV programs shown today on America’s networks likewise degrade humans for the enjoyment of the masses; but, unlike Rome, the Colosseum is brought to each American’s house – no need to exercise by walking to a great amphitheater.”

A perfect capture of that bit of culture in my estimation. Grab the book folks – you’ll be glad you did.

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Tom Blair chooses Benjamin Franklin as his voice of reason in “Poorer Richard’s America” to hold up the mirror to modern America and show us that we’re not as pretty as we think we are.

Just as America’s fledgling revolutionaries needed the British-born Tom Paine to give them a pick-up during a time that tried men’s souls (“Common Sense” and “The Crisis”), British-born Blair delivers to modern day patriots a much needed kick-in-the-pants.

Blair, a successful entrepreneur, using the style found in Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack”, complete with excerpts of speeches, quotes and aphorisms (“The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned; but still ’tis nonsense.” -1754) examines many of our national ills in a series of essays in just over 200 quick-turning pages.

Of our current two-party system, Blair calls them “Honkers” and “Quackers”.

“These Honkers and Quackers…these representatives of the people stand before the national media as cockatoos, repeating their party’s most bizarre, inaccurate, and self-serving statements. Statements that to most Americans sadly reconfirm what they so fearfully comprehend: Congress is as a great team of horses, some harnessed as they should be, head-to-tail, others head-to-head while others tail-to-tail; thus ensuring that Congress, while dropping great mounds of horse manure, makes scant progress, exhibits little sense, and achieves only the slightest movement.”

Blair doesn’t hold back in his critique of our national policies regarding the debt, deficit, taxes, wars, foreign policy, culture wars, the current American work-ethic and sense of entitlement, health care and even chimes in on the “point of conception” debate:

“When in the soft glow of a candle, the young lass, with adoring eyes, ever so close to the broad-shouldered lad, with her warm breath on his, as that lad, with a single, but ever-so-powerful stroke, pulls the cork from the second bottle of Madeira, to interrupt them from that moment on is to thwart conception, and thus offend the grand design of the Supreme Being.”

Often with wit, but sometimes with abrasion, traits that follow in Franklin’s footsteps, Blair reminds us that as Americans, we have been given a great gift of Liberty. But, just because we have a few victories under our belt, our sense of exceptionalism is not preordained; with our current set of policies and personal behavior choices, our current path is outright ruinous. Blair openly and rightly questions where we got off course, but also shows us how our central and shared beliefs can help right the ship.

Blair’s point is not to merely point out the flaws that Franklin might see in modern-day America, but he also seeks to remind us of the great promise that our form of government, as envisioned by the Founders, provides us. And, most importantly, that we still can change.

“Today, no less than ever, citizens of other countries admire and, yes, covet much of what is America. And one such admirable quality of America is that ability to look inward and exercise constant hand-wringing over America’s faults,” he writes.

Blair doesn’t leave us with a promise that our best days are ahead of us – he leaves that for us to decide.

However, should you read the book, you are likely to be compelled to doing the things that will ensure that, indeed, our best days do still remain ahead.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/politics/blog-network/2010/08/review_poorer_richards_america.html

And, Ben Franklin prided himself on trying to eliminate a bias in the news that he reported. I’m not sure he would agree that the legs of today’s fair reporting always straddle an issue. I think he might suggest that at times it appears that those who report the news sometimes comingle their opinion with the facts.

And he might be taken aback by our sense of entitlement. If you stretch a piece of canvas, you can say it’s a safety net or a trampoline. I think most people, for a couple hundred years, looked at America as a trampoline: something to bounce higher and higher on. More and more people now look at America as a safety net, to help with this or that problem.

“To serve the Publick faithfully, and at the same time please it entirely, it is impractical.”