Benjamin Franklin: His presence on the U.S. $100 bill reflects his importance as a champion of the individual as the basis of a well- functioning society. The Centrality of the Individual: Benjamin Franklin's Message for Uruguay (El Pais, Uruguay) "Between cocaine paste and marijuana, absorbed in the debate about ways of counting homicides, faced with a deterioration of the issues and debate, are we in Uruguay are doomed to missing the core message of a universal colossus like Franklin? ... Determined to lay the blame on wider society and the enemy class, how are we to realize that even the hundred dollar bill teaches us that the foundation of everything is the person?" By Leonardo Guzmán Translated By Halszka Czarnocka November 30, 2012 Uruguay - El Pais - Original Article (Spanish) Uruguay President Jose Mujica: Known as the poorest head of state in the world, Mujica lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his salary to charity. BBC NEWS VIDEO: Uruguay's Jose Mujica - 'the poorest president in the world', Nov. 15, 00:03:48 After many years, I have returned to the United States. In the capital of Georgia, I am again impressed by all that works well. Not so much in the big numbers, though, with the country threatened by foreign debt, the European crisis and competition from China. At a human level, I am thrilled by what is working, from cleanliness to services. Beyond a framework which is always easy to criticize, the dream of integration is still alive, running as it has from Uncle Tom's Cabin to the martyrdoms of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. It is alive and made real through the equality of the educated, who work with enthusiasm and walk with smiling faces rather than accusers with resentful sneers or the absent gaze of those who've already surrendered. People continue to admire the winner instead of treating him with suspicion and grumbling. These are people who acknowledge the other without looking toward his origins, respecting his talents, virtues, and applauding his triumph. Good people. Of course, not everything is better. More than a decade after 9/11, security forces still react with obsessive searches that stretch one's patience to the limit and border on indignity. The people of the United States owe this misfortune to the fundamentalism of certain Muslim groups. Let us hope that, despite tensions that this kind of fundamentalism is sowing in the Middle East, security here will again come to depend more on confidence than on subjecting every last soul boarding an aircraft to X-ray examinations. Posted by Worldmeets.US Like Worldmeets.US on Facebook YOUR DONATION MAKES OUR WORK AS A NON-PROFIT POSSIBLE. THANK YOU.

After all, the United States owes its existence to utopias - great flights of imagination and thinking. This is an ideal, and to affirm it is neither to be utopian, nor ignorant about the things that gave rise to it.

To forget the principal and not fight for it would be to silently surrender aspects of freedom and a lifestyle that should not be lost to the mists of time. We all should preserve them for the future.

This is something not taught under the materialist and determinist theories denounced and pummeled by Pitirim Alexandrovitch Sorokin 60 years ago, but which still prevail in the educational systems of countries like ours.

[Pitirim Alexandrovitch Sorokin was an ardent opponent of communism, and emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1923, at age 33].

But if history is seen as an effort by visionaries to lead the spirit of the people, it is clear that despite everything, the dream of the Mayflower has prevailed. And given that, Benjamin Franklin's hundred dollar bill has become much more than a symbol of economic power.

SEE ALSO ON THIS:

FTD, Germany: 'Cult of the Founding Fathers' is Obscuring America's Worldview

Corriere Della Sera, Italy: 'Obama Prototype': Rome's First Black Emperor, Septimius Severus

Le Monde, France: Obama and the Return to the Founding Fathers

Global Times, China: The West's Insulting Dismissal of China's Ancient History

If Franklin's venerable image presides over the $100 bill, it isn't because he invented the lightning rod, nor because he managed to flourish between the colonial and independence eras. It is because he defined and embodied a model of a fighting person, going from thought to action and vice versa following a circular and virtuous quest, in which duty and work governed and the rule of law emerged out of the human condition.

All this is reflected in his personal notes, collected in The Book of a Good Man.

Between cocaine paste and marijuana, absorbed in the debate about ways of counting homicides, faced with a deterioration of the issues and debate, are we in Uruguay doomed to missing the core message of a universal colossus like Franklin?

Determined to lay the blame on wider society and the enemy class, how are we to realize that even the hundred dollar bill teaches us that the foundation of everything is the person?

CLICK HERE FOR SPANISH VERSION

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus

[Posted by Worldmeets.US Dec. 2, 11:41am]