This premium is being posted on the day of the Iowa caucuses, and we couldn't think of a better reminder of the innovative, inquiring, resourceful spirit of the founders of this great nation.

Ben Franklin was everything in reality that the Republican Party claims to be (except for the religious pomposity, bigotry, government for the rich and a few other things) in cynical slogans undercut by rampant hypocrisy. Franklin achieved his success and notoriety (he was worshipped in Paris) based on merit, hard work, creativity and the practice of "virtue."

Yes, Franklin believed in virtue, but he also felt a blind belief in religion could be a corrupting force (as we see in the likes of George Bush and Pat Robertson). He was a Deist who opined that there was no space for religious dogma in matters of state.

In fact Franklin, shortly before he died, wrote to the then President of Yale:

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble."

Franklin's biography is mostly about his formative years, and, therefore, all the more enlightening as to the youthful origins of a man who symbolizes the best in the American charcter, before it was turned into a corrupted Disneyesque smugness and caricature by opportunists and hucksters.