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.
