# Wednesday, August 01, 2007

I knew Jefferson was down with religious pluralism...

...but I didn't know about Ben Franklin:

Ben Franklin, the founding father of many important institutions in Philadelphia, a key diplomat and a framer of the US Constitution, wrote in his Autobiography concerning a non-denominational place of public preaching he helped found "so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service."

[ History News Network ]

Interesting and well stated article, it would seem that much thought was put into freely accepting Muslims in the fabric of America even way back at the beginning.

#    Comments [2] |
Thursday, August 02, 2007 7:29:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
Apparently it's a hoax that he was an anti-Semite: http://www.fi.edu/franklin/birthday/faq.html#36

I wonder how often the web's ability to refute myths exceeds its spreading of them.
Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:42:23 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
I'd never even heard of this one. Reading about this [url]http://www.adl.org/special_reports/franklin_prophecy/print.asp[/url] is strange because it seems so familliar yet the article is over 50 years old. It seems clear that people aren't new and hate speech isn't new, just the Internet allows it to be spread so much more affectively.

I hope as we continue with this Web thing, that it shines the light of truth on all subjects and bring us to a day where the haters are naught but a memory. Though that's probably some serious "pie in the sky" thinking there...
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