Word: franklin
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...Here Franklin's improvisational genius came into play, as did his restraint. Adams would snarl that Franklin would receive undue credit for having set out "to abolish monarchy, aristocracy, and hierarchy, throughout the world." If he could, he might well have; he had long been allergic to titles and idle elites and dynastic privilege. Fifty-three years before he sailed to France, he noted that Americans do not speak of "Master Adam" or "the Right Honourable Abraham" or "Noah, Esquire." Those observations had not endeared him to the ruling elites of America or Britain any more than his humble origins...
...What Franklin did have to do was extend to prerevolutionary France a tolerance that did not come easily to a devout republican and a man who seldom met with anything--from bifocals to popcorn to spelling to the Lord's Prayer--that he did not feel he could improve on. While he might well write off European peerages as "a sort of tar-and-feather honour, a mixture of foulness and folly," he kept this view to himself while consorting with the aristocrats who eased the U.S. into being. A year before his return, Franklin did concede, "There...
...discretion Franklin differed from his countrymen, who almost universally found the Paris posting a Calvary and who were vocal on the subject. One swore he would prefer a farm in America to a dukedom in France. Adams wailed that he would rather be a doorman in Congress. Among his torments was Franklin himself, who understood that some American qualities--piety, earnestness, efficiency--did not go far in 18th century France. Franklin remained at all times a pragmatist and an astonishingly flexible thinker. He was realistic about the prospects of conducting business in a land of radically different habits...
...Franklin paid the price for his French posture, which he made appear comfortable when it was at times excruciating. By the end of the mission he had reason to complain of Congress, and it of him. After eight years in France, he seemed more the courtier than the father of self-reliance. His flaws had been on full display in Paris, where his detractors--burning with impatience while the wheels of European diplomacy ground at their stately pace--had had plenty of time to dilate upon them. In an uncharacteristically self-indulgent mood, he grumbled that Congress had shown little...
...there were two Franklins: the stately philosopher revered by the French and the eccentric, shambling, adage-spouting guy with the kite, about whom America has had mixed feelings. In France the ugly American wears as many faces as he does baseball caps, but the model American wears the placid, loose-jawed countenance of Ben Franklin, Ur-republican. He stands in stark contrast to his sanctimonious and chauvinistic and mercantile countrymen, a model of what the French like most in their Americans: a skeptical, subtle faux naif with a sense of humor and a taste for culture and a deep appreciation...