The Founding Fathers, travel, and flying

February 15, 2021 by Joshua
in Freedom, Nature

With my practicing singing the national anthem and my guests who are experts in abolition, I keep researching the colonies and early United States.

Not my goal, but I noticed how often the American Founding Fathers kept showing up in Europe. Here’s Benjamin Franklin in Paris:

I could have posted about Jefferson, John Adams, or, for all I know, many non-famous colonists and early Americans visiting Europe and the Caribbean. Also plenty British and other Europeans visited North America, including many British troops.

None of them flew. For that matter, their sailboats must have been slow and less stable or reliable than ours today. Yet they traveled across oceans without burning fossil fuels.

Why should we think not flying means not traveling? Do we think Jefferson and Franklin led empty lives or missed out on cultural exchange or what we think requires flying? How has what we call progress led us to greater dependence, neediness, and entitlement?

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