universal healthcare

[Jester]

That's a semi-valid argument. Often quotes are not even attributed. Sometimes they are attributed to the wrong person. And seldom, except perhaps in scholastic thesis, is a full reference given. Most sources are like this. No attempt appears to have been made to verify sources, and no sources seem to be given. Although I don't have any at hand, the books of quotations which I've looked at in the past seem to be the same.

If I don't have a source, I call it out. I'm pedantic that way. It itches my historian brain in a very uncomfortable way that we could go around putting words in historical figures' mouths. Sometimes, they are egregious untruths (the Lenin and inflation quote from awhile back) other times, harmless but annoying pablum (Burke's supposed "all that is necessary for evil to triumph..."). But always a pet peeve, I'm afraid.

We cannot verify everything every time or we'd never make any progress. Why do you question this quote, in particular, when you've accepted others with no more validation in the past? Is it subjective, in that you disagree with the content, or objective in that you have some indication it is false? The sentiment appears to be in line with Franklin's character and attitude.

I try to be ideologically neutral in nit-picking. But, obviously, several things get in the way. Not being devoid of personal bias, even if I try, surely gets in the way. Reading posts from, say, Kandrathe pretty carefully and critically is another - I'll pick up his examples more often than others. I also, as a matter of course, check anything in them that seems odd or unsourced to me. Sometimes it checks out, and I say nothing, and sometimes it doesn't, and I bring it up.

I also think these lists of quotes are more popular on the right than among those more friendly to my viewpoint - or at least, they are on this board. Usually, if I want to use a quote like that, I'll search for a source, and if I can't find one, I'll flag it as such. But I don't use many aphorism-type quotes, so it doesn't come up much. (I probably account for a rather disturbing % of the left-leaning posts in many of these arguments myself.)

Kandrathe has correctly and amply demonstrated that this general sentiment, that a crude majoritarian populism could very easily undermine property rights and hijack the government to plunder the wealthy is known to have been shared by many of the founding fathers, and by plenty of other authors since. I'm not sure the extent to which Ben Franklin shared this idea - he seems slightly less... bourgeois than some of the other founding fathers. But who knows. All I know is I can't find a source for that quote anywhere obvious.

-Jester