the americanization of benjamin franklin
"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"...Franklin came to stand for all of America's bourgeouis complacency, it's get ahead materialism, it's utilitarian obsession with success - the unimaginative superficiality and vulgarity of American culture which kills the soul."
-- Gordon S. Wood