{"id":20156,"date":"2026-07-28T19:24:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=20156"},"modified":"2026-07-28T19:24:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:24:46","slug":"what-benjamin-franklin-actually-believed-and-why-it-would-horrify-his-fans-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=20156","title":{"rendered":"What Benjamin Franklin Actually Believed \u2014 And Why It Would Horrify His Fans Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.boredpanda.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/benjamin-franklin-myths-vs-history-fb.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div xmlns:default=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\">\n<div class=\"bp-premium-story-banner\"> <span class=\"bpp-banner-icon\"> <default:svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" fill=\"none\"> <default:path d=\"M2 6.71917V2.5663C2 2.41611 2.05747 2.27207 2.15976 2.16587C2.26205 2.05966 2.40079 2 2.54545 2H13.4545C13.5992 2 13.7379 2.05966 13.8402 2.16587C13.9425 2.27207 14 2.41611 14 2.5663V6.71917C14 12.6664 9.13823 14.6368 8.16747 14.9709C8.05895 15.0097 7.94105 15.0097 7.83253 14.9709C6.86177 14.6368 2 12.6664 2 6.71917Z\" stroke=\"#FFFFFF\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"\/> <default:path d=\"M13 10L8.00003 7L3 10\" stroke=\"#FFFFFF\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"\/> <\/default:svg> <\/span> <span class=\"bpp-banner-text\">This story is part of Bored Panda Premium.<\/span><\/div>\n<p>Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the most aggressively mythologized man in American <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boredpanda.com\/curiosities\/history\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" staff-link\" rel=\"noopener \">history<\/a>, which is an extraordinarily competitive category. He flies his kite, he founds his nation, he grins from your wallet, and he sits comfortably in the imagination of every conservative commentator who has ever used the phrase \u201cthe Founders intended\u201d without troubling themselves too much with what the Founders actually said.<\/p>\n<p>Franklin is their guy. Wise, godly, industrious, moral. A man of the people. A true American. He was also the man who wrote a scientific essay arguing that humanity\u2019s most urgent intellectual priority should be making flatulence smell better. So.<\/p>\n<p>The distance between the Benjamin Franklin of national mythology and the Benjamin Franklin of historical record is not a short walk. It is, in fact, a journey of such considerable length and scenic interest that it deserves its own guided tour. Because the real Franklin, brilliant, contradictory, deeply weird, occasionally monstrous, and almost always fascinating, would not survive a single news cycle in the current political climate. He would be canceled before the kite left the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Buckle up, because the man on your hundred-dollar bill had bodies in his basement, doubted the divinity of Jesus, owned enslaved people, wrote a detailed letter advising a young man on the merits of sleeping with older women, and spent his mornings sitting naked in front of open windows in the name of personal wellness. And that is before we get to the racism. Which we will absolutely be getting to.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"didomi\/javascript\">\nwindow._fbSDKPromise = window._fbSDKPromise || new Promise((resolve, reject) => {\nwindow.fbAsyncInit = function () {\nFB.init({\nappId  : '887842622821495',\nversion: 'v17.0',\nstatus : true,\ncookie : true,\nxfbml  : false\n});\nresolve(FB);\n};\n\/\/ Load SDK only once\nif (!document.getElementById('facebook-jssdk')) {\nconst script = document.createElement('script');\nscript.id = 'facebook-jssdk';\nscript.async = true;\nscript.src = `https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/${BoredPanda.Config.wp_lang}\/sdk.js`;\nscript.onerror = reject;\ndocument.head.appendChild(script);\n}\n});\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This story is part of Bored Panda Premium. Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the most aggressively mythologized man in American history, which is an extraordinarily competitive category. He flies his kite, he founds his nation, he grins from your wallet, and he sits comfortably in the imagination of every conservative commentator who has ever used the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static.boredpanda.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/benjamin-franklin-myths-vs-history-fb.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}