Ben Franklin: … How to Diminish a Nation.
Nobody Remembers
It’s a pity that our founders are being trashed and forgotten in our schools–so just for fun, here’s some Benjamin Franklin quotes you are NOT likely to see taught anywhere: Each one describes what is happening in America today.
From Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind: 1751
The following things must diminish a nation, VIZ:
(a) The Being Conquered.—- “For the conquerors will engross as many offices, and exact as much tribute or profit on the labor of the conquered , as well maintain them in their new establishments, and this diminishing the subsistence of the natives discourages their marriages, and so gradually diminish them, while the foreigners increase.”
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(b) Law of Territory:— “Thus, the Britons, being driven into Wales and crowded to gather in a barren country insufficient to support such great numbers, diminished until the people bore a proportion to the produce, while the Saxons increased on their abandoned lands: until the Island became full of English. And were the English now driven into Wales by some foreign nation, there would in a few years be no more Englishmen in Britain , than there are now people in Wales.”
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(c) Loss of Trade:” Manufactures exported draw subsistence from foreign counties for numbers, who are thereby enabled to marry and raise families. If the nation be deprived of any branch of trade, and no new employment is found for the people occupied in that branch, it will also be soon deprived of so many people.”
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(d) Loss of food. (I skipped this one it was so obvious.)
(e) Bad Government and Insecure Property.— People not only leave such a country and settling abroad, incorporate with other nations, lose their native language, and become foreigners, but, the industry of those that remain being discouraged, the quantity of subsistence in the country is lessened, and the support of a family becomes more difficult: so heavy taxes tend to diminish a people.
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(f) The Introduction of Slaves:—“The Negroes brought into the English sugar islands have greatly diminished the whites there. The poor are by this means deprived of employment, while a few families acquire vast estates, which they spend on foreign luxuries and education their children in the habit of those luxuries. The same income is needed for the support of one that might have maintained 100. “
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“In fine, a nation well regulated is like a polyp—take away a limb, its place is soon supplied cut it in two, and each deficient part shall speedily grow out of the part remaining.”
“And since detachments of English from Britain, sent to America , will have their places at home so soon supplied and increase so largely here, why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements and by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our anglifying, and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion? “
“Which leads me to add one remark, that the number of purely white people in the world is proportionally very small. Why increase the sons of Africa by planting them on America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawnies, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my country, for such kind of partial is natural to mankind.” —Ben Franklin
And of course, many would say Ben was a racist by this remark.
But then again…so is Obama. He prefers a black Muslim nation.
If you throw a stone at Ben, you might as well throw one at Barack. Tell me, if what destroys a nation was so obvious to Ben Franklin, why is it not obvious to the men and women in Washington?
I think you know.
Nobody Remembers Benjamin Franklin and the Indians
Nobody Remembers
On May 9, 1754, a political cartoon in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette depicted a snake cut into eight pieces, each section representing a part of the American colonies; the caption read, “JOIN, or DIE.”
I wonder if Benjamin Franklin would have ever believed that his famous drawing would now be an icon on tee-shirts and flags, and sold in every Mall in the year 2013?
Benjamin Franklin was such an important part of our founding, it’s a wonder that more of his words are not taught in school. While John Adams once remarked that Ben Franklin never followed his own witty sayings, unless you are a historian, you probably missed some of his other opinions: Like the one he had on Indians.
Here’s’ some quotes from:The Futility of Educating the Indians, from a letter he wrote to Peter Collinson, on May 9, 1753.
The proneness of Human nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labor, appears strongly in the little success that has hitherto attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians. In their present way of living, almost all their wants are supplied by the spontaneous productions of nature with the addition of very little labor, if hunting and fishing may indeed be called labor, where game is so plenty. They visit us frequently and see the advantages that arts, sciences, and compact societies procure us. They are not deficient in natural understanding: and yet they have never shown any inclination to change their manner of life for ours to learn any of our arts.
He goes on to point out, that whenever the Indians lived among the whites, or even were educated at Harvard, they wanted to go back home and live out their lives as Indians. But when they did go home, the Chiefs thought their education was good for nothing, because they didn’t know how to survive.
His theory on why some cultures are superior to others was this:
So that I am apt to imagine that close societies, subsisting by labor and art, arose first, not from choice but from necessity, when numbers, being driven by war from their hunting grounds and prevented by seas, or by other nations for obtaining other hunting grounds were crowded together into some narrow territories, which without labor could not afford them food.
And he ends with this comment on ‘welfare’
They should, therefore have every encouragement we can invent, and not one motive to diligence subtracted, and the support of the poor should not be by maintaining them in idleness but by employing them in some kind of labor suited to their abilities of body as I am informed, begins to be of late the practice in many parts of England where workhouses are erected for that purpose. If these were general, I should think the poor world be more careful and work voluntarily to lay up something for themselves against a rainy day, rather then run the risk of being obliged to work at the pleasure of others for a bare subsistence and that too under confinement.
Ben tells us that the Indians, did not want to be Americans. Just like the Muslims don’t want to become Americanized.
Back in Franklins’ day, it was believed if you could work, you should. And that perhaps when forced to start working, you would then see that the future is much brighter than living off of welfare. Lessons that would be lost on ‘President’ Obama.
These are the lessons that should be taught in a history class. A teacher could use Franklin’s words to start all kinds of lively discussions in the classroom about today’s world. 
The great Thomas Sowell came to much the same conclusion as Franklin, the physical terrain where you’re people are from play a big part in the culture you grow up with. The Indians didn’t want to become Europeans. Go down this road and you open up a whole can of moral issues don’t you?
The elites of the world are still trying to make all the cultures ‘merge.” They are trying to stuff the round pegs into the square holes. History has shown that it usually doesn’t end well.
The Indians eventually lost their hunting grounds, because they didn’t have a Benjamin Franklin.
About
I am a nobody. If the different classes of America were color-coded, I would be in the yucky brown, one rung up from the bottom. I grew up in Naples, Florida and live near the Mississippi River now with my husband and two dogs. I am part of the slowly disappearing middle-class. I was a musician most of my life: drummer/singer/keyboards—but I retired before the plastic surgery flu hit. I have no degrees, which could be a good thing…depending on how you view our educational system. I do have three patents…but that really doesn’t make me a somebody. The one thing that is constant in my life is my OPINIONS, which i have more than perhaps even Carl Sagan could have imagined…mostly political. (yes…my ancestors were crabby buggers)
Hopefully other nobody’s will put their opinions on my site. But, if you happen to be a somebody, you’re more than welcomed to help out.
It’s my Nobody Opinion that Nobody’s Perfect, and Nobody Cares, that Nobody Knows why Nobody Wins, and when that happens, Nobody Wonders, why Nobody Flashes, why Nobody’s Fooled, but then Nobody remembers that Nobody ALWAYS Reports the truth.
You can email me at joyanna_adams@yahoo.com
Joyanna Adams
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