User talk:72.82.25.114

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a person who has recently used this information to facilitate my understanding of Benjamin Franklin's relation to the literary, cultural, and political history of the 18th century, I want to say that I think this entry was useful. Given the debates going on on this page, it would also be helpful to have more information on the relation of US republicanism to classical Greek and Roman models. In terms of your comments regarding the ideological bent, I see your point, but any discerning reader will understand the deep paradoxes of the liberty, rights, and non-corruption discourses in relation to a country that was also founded upon slavery and white male elite privilege. Of course, one must always ask liberty and rights for whom? It may be helpful to explicitly mention this in the entry, but few history books do, and so again discerning readers are used to asking this question whenever reading historical information. After reading the main page and this discussion page, I come away with an idea of republicanism in opposition to monarchy, and also as a legacy of European bourgeois liberal thought, which advocated an increase of liberty and rights (read opportunity and access to power) for a larger portion of civil society, but certainly not for everyone. The 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries are still heir to these ideas and struggles -- and I think the impression that I am coming away with is historically accurate. I am not coming away with a sense that there was some kind of unitary discourse of political thought or with the idea that the US is a virtuous, noble country due to its foundation on these ideals. I guess I want to assure you that critical readers exist in the U.S. Because all discourses are ideological and slanted, discerning readers know how to ask the appropriate questions to figure out how to value information and how to understand what is being excluded. 12.217.235.114 (talk) 01:28, 9 December 2007 (UTC)rhaki