On this date in 1774, Benjamin Franklin penned a subversive political essay that revealed his particular genius as well as the growing confidence of the Americans chafing under British rule.
Styled as an "open letter" to Frederick North, Britain's prime minister, the author placed his clever column in the Smyrna Coffee-House on London's St. James Street. As I've noted previously about Ben Franklin's rabble-rousing writing, this was not your local Starbucks. For a century, Smyrna Coffee-House had been a meeting place of political liberals. Invoking its name was more than an example of Franklin's puckish sense of humor. It was, essentially, a code word.
British officials, including Lord North himself, missed that cue -- and others. Franklin's suggestion that martial law be imposed over the colonies was ironic, as were his deadpan assertions that "one born in Britain is equal to 20 Americans" and that the only thing that would motivate the "Yankee Doodles" was the lash.
Although he was part of America's founding, which ultimately required armed conflict with Great Britain to effectuate, Ben Franklin was also one of this country's first journalists. He took sides, but he didn't think his side was the only one worth hearing. The practice of having competing columnists on the same page was one of Franklin's many innovations. And while other writers and editors of his era also preferred satire to bluster, no one did it better.
In our polarized political world, influential elements of the newly energized political left display barely concealed hostility to organized religion, and toward people of faith. Their stated rationale are the various issues of the day -- gay marriage, let's say -- but their language often comes across as the very thing they profess to detest: namely, bigotry. These progressives don't (usually) describe religious faith as the "opiate of the masses," but they might as well.
Meanwhile, their counterparts on the right fall into the same kind of self-made rhetorical traps.
Social conservatives railing again the latest liberal fad invariably describe the America of the Founders as a "Christian country," while emphasizing our "Judeo-Christian" background. Although this is not historically inaccurate, it manages to miss the very point of the American Revolution.
Ben Franklin believed in God and in the positive role organized religion played in American life. But he had little time for people who employed religion to score political points or who used the doctrinal differences between various faiths to build walls to divide people -- or keep them out of America. He acted on this belief, too, raising money for the construction of a hall in Philadelphia that would be "expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something."
And Franklin truly meant any preacher: "Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us," he added, "he would find a pulpit at his service."
"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue," Franklin wrote on another occasion. "And the Scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did ... that we did good to our fellow creatures…"
As Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson noted in a 2003 Time magazine essay:
By the end of his life, he had contributed to the building funds of each and every sect in Philadelphia, including £5 for the Congregation Mikveh Israel for its new synagogue in April 1788. During the July 4 celebrations that year, he was too sick to leave his bed, but the parade marched under his window. For the first time, as per arrangements that Franklin had overseen, "the clergy of different Christian denominations, with the rabbi of the Jews, walked arm in arm."
And when he was carried to his grave two years later, his casket was accompanied by all the clergymen of the city, every one of them, of every faith.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
