re: billy welcome for us troops. it will happen!
billytea - I am shocked to say the least by the comments attributed to Washington and Franklin
Clearly, incredibly bigoted people and I guess it only goes to show that having intellectual where-with-all doesnt preclude character flaws.
But more contemprary in nature, it seems that Franklin clearly - very clearly - solves the current debate over the rights of the Jews to the area known as Israel. And not as a 1948-onwards claim but clearly one espoused over the millenia.
Note his quote:.
"For over 1,700 years, the Jews have been bewailing their sad fate in that they have been exiled from their homeland, as they call Palestine."
Also, it would seem, the bigotry that suffuses the man extends to Asians as well. Seems his real beef is with the fact that he sees Jews as asians and lord knows where he got that from.
He said, " Jews, gentlemen, are Asiatics, let them be born where they will nor how many generations they are away from Asia, they will never be otherwise. Their ideas do not conform to an American's, and will not even thou they live among us ten generations. A leopard cannot change its spots. Jews are Asiatics, are a menace to this country if permitted entrance, and should be excluded by this Constitutional Convention." Benjamin Franklin
Finally he was also clearly anti-Negro as he himself had a large interest in the slave trade from what I remember.
Seems liberty and justice were a set of bandied terms allegedly inalienable and universal but afforded to a select few.
