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1. JWR – interesting history on Dr. Benjamin Rush. I am related to Dr Rush through family. My uncle married a Rush. Great to be part of American history if only through family relations.

2. Aside from Philadelphia’s James Wilkinson, Benjamin Rush is my favorite Founder.

   During the Constitutional Convention, some Founders made much of arguments based on knowledge of the classics and Roman history. James Madison, for example, used a distorted history of the Greek nation states to argue against too much democracy and in favor of the Roman Republic model. See Carl Richards, “The Founders and the Classics”.

   Use of history to argue politics has a very long tradition, of course, going from Machiavelli back to Aristotle and Polybius. But given that I agree with Founder Aedanus Burke that the Constitutional Convention was really a covert plot – a COUNTER-revolution by the Rich to put the rabble in their place after Shay’s Rebellion– I suspect the classics were used because 95 percent of the population were ignorant of them and hence put on the defensive. Same reason some incompetent, corrupt morons wave their Ivy League degrees today.

   Benjamin Rush was better educated and knew more about the classics than most of the others. He cracked up laughing at their use.

   In a later letter, he noted:
   “What trash may we not suppose has been handed down to us from antiquity, when we detect such errors and prejudices in the history of events of which we have been eyewitnesses and in which we have been actors?
   I am sometimes disposed to question the talents of Caesar, the virtues of Antoninus, and the crimes of Commodus. I suspect the well-concerted plans of battles recorded by Livy to have been picked up in the barber’s shops of Rome or from deserters from the Roman armies. “

   See https://books.google.com/books?id=mpaaDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA534&lpg=PA534&dq=%22benjamin+rush%22+Roman+Livy+deserters+barber+shops&source=bl&ots=Vx6GI0D3Ww&sig=ACfU3U2wLGdZ-2_amH5Rm-Bpc2E6yhcFJw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjF8q2VuNTpAhXGQs0KHQF5C74Q6AEwAHoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22benjamin%20rush%22%20Roman%20Livy%20deserters%20barber%20shops&f=false

   If that link doesn’t work , Google “Benjamin Rush” Roman Livy deserters “barber shops”

   1. Thank you Don, very interesting.

   2. How many´d the Right to vote at that time?

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