Stats for nerds
4recommend
31mentions
31people
2009–2022years
13% recommend84% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Hey, I got an idea!
You know, we could attack The Declaration Of Independence -- because we don't like any of its writers -- Thomas Jefferson? He owned slaves! John Adams? He was affiliated with that seditious Washington guy! Benjamin Franklin? He wore a stupid hat! <g>
We could attack The Constitution in the same way!
Steps:
1) Choose a random writer or signatory.
2) Find the one unvirtuous act (in a whole lifetime of more-or-less virtuous acts!) -- that the public is most aware of.
3) Use that act to frame that historical writer or signatory -- in the most unvirtuous light possible.
4) Now, because the writer or signatory is framed in this way, that creates (by implication) -- the idea that the document is "bad" in some way -- when in fact it is not!
In fact, we can do the same thing to all the great historic documents of all time -- for that matter!
The Constitution Of The United Kingdom, The Magna Carta, The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights -- the list goes on and on!
Just attack one or more authors -- and you're attacking the document!
Harry Potter? Harry Potter sucks because J.K. Rowling did some small unvirtuous act in her youth, and that makes the book bad!
Star Wars? Star Wars sucks because I heard that George Lucas stole a piece of candy when he was 12! <g>
Your Math Teacher told you that 2+2=4? Well, that's wrong because that Math Teacher is a bad person because of some small unvirtuous act they may have committed (it's alleged, not proven!) -- 50 or 60 years ago! (I think it involved not thanking a student for an apple, or something like that, at least that's the way it was reported to me by a newspaper who reported it from TV news article who reported it from another newspaper who reported it from a guy who claimed it to be true while buying some donuts in midtown Manhattan...)
It reminds me of that quote from Billy Madison...
(You know, the one that begins with "Congratulations Mr. Madison"... and ends with... "Everyone in the room is now dumber..." <g>)
Anyway, interested parties may wish to read the following:
Alain de Botton: The News – a User’s Manual
https://www.alisonmorgan.co.uk/Books/De%20Botton%202014.pdf
Although -- maybe it is true that Benjamin Franklin did wear a funny hat? <g>
- I guess it could be summarized as the feelings expressed by Thomas Jefferson et al in the US Declaration of Independence.
Few people understand and value those feelings today, but I’m one of those few. I’m not naive enough to think that the US is full of people like me, but there are more of us over there, and it’s not socially acceptable to piss on us endlessly (as it is in Sweden I’d say).
- Thomas Jefferson drafted the US Declaration of Independence, and was a particularly violent "slave owner" [1]. While context is important, it doesn't mean that a document with an unsavory origin story should be ignored for that reason alone.
[1] scare quotes indicate that I reject the assertion that anyone was ever "owned" by anyone else. Some people were violently imprisoned against their will, but never owned.
- I do not have to think Thomas Jefferson was a saint to find value in the opening of the Declaration of Independence--when applied to all people.
You understand that one can be very, very in favor of the stated aspirations of the American founding documents while understanding that the people saying them both did a lot of bad shit and had a provincial and shitty understanding of who those stated aspirations applied to, yeah?
Those words are a call for us to do better, and part of doing better is understanding our often-shitty ancestry.
- Not really related to the Tea Act per se, but the revolutionary war was NOT a revolution at first. It was, from the very beginning, more of what you would classify as a rebellious act. An attempt to renegotiate the terms of colonial rule with mother England.
Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" changed all that. It's only after that pamphlet was published that you see the other founding fathers taking anti-monarchy stances and advocating for total independence. The Declaration of Independence was, at best, edited by Thomas Jefferson, but almost certainly written by Thomas Paine in my mind.
It's funny because Thomas Paine was an englishman who'd only just recently arrived in the colonies.
- A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine (about the Stoics, and last I knew, free to download online)
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt (about the impact of the Roman poet Lucretius' poem On The Nature of Things--everything from the idea of the atom, Botticelli's Venus on the Half Shell to why Thomas Jefferson put "the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence--and much more)
The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone (about David Fairchild, who introduced 10,000 plants to U.S. agriculture at the turn of the 20th century, most of the groceries we buy today)
The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf (a biography of Alexander von Humboldt)
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
