The Join or Die cartoon depicting the snake was representation of Uniting the Colonies.It was a plea for UNITY.... it was not a threat.
Well "Tea Baggers" have managed to get their facts wrong yet again. The Tea Party uses this iconic American.... Join or Die symbol as if it means.... JOIN US or you DIE you S.O.B.
They have completely missed the meaning of the cartoon. Ben Franklin was a peace loving man... a man who believed in the greater good. He was not a militant who resorted to violence. Yet somehow, these Ultra Right Wing Radicals, who love to claim that only they are "The True Americans" are twisting the meaning of a symbol that professed UNITY.
This is not a symbol meant to threaten....
It is ...once again ...this delusional thinking that seems to be rampant among Tea Party Members. And it's not just a few people... it's not isolated cases. Visit their sites... read what they write.... you will go to bed with one eye open in fear. They want a Revolution... They want a fight....
Our forefathers created this great country of ours so that people could escape tyranny and injustice.
Yet theses so called "Tea Party Patriots" twist and bend and trample on the very things our forefathers were trying to create for this land. It's the ultimate irony. Their Social Community is chock full of pictures of American Revolutionary images. I think someone needs to tell them it's 2010 not 1770.
And maybe also point out that the images they cling to... actually represent the ideals of a time and a people who were looking for a way to unite people in our new country.... not incite them into fighting each other.
Join or Die is about coming together as a country... not about fighting your fellow American.
Little info for your reading pleasure.
From Wikipedia:
Join, or Die is a well-known political cartoon,created by Benjamin Franklin and first published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. The original publication by the Gazette is the earliest known pictorial representation of colonial union produced by a British colonist in America. It is a woodcut showing a snake severed into eighths, with each segment labeled with the initials of a British American colony or region. New England was represented as one segment, rather than the four colonies it was at that time. In addition, Delaware and Georgia were omitted completely. Thus, it has 8 segments of snake rather than the traditional 13 colonies. The cartoon appeared along with Franklin's editorial about the "disunited state" of the colonies, and helped make his point about the importance of colonial unity.
Here's an interesting site called Founding Fathers
Note this section of text: "It was a plea for unity in defending the colonies during the French and Indian War."
