The French? The FRENCH? They just copied us. Besides, did the French have CELL PHONES? I think not. Here’s the “Declaration Committee” working in 1776 to draft a MOST important document (which apparently sort of copied the Dutch, but you made no mention of the Dutch, so I won’t).
The Declaration Committee, Currier and Ives
Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and some dude named Robert R. Livingston (New York) pause so Connecticut’s Roger Sherman can make a call. I’m betting he was talking to Tom Paine and sneakily got wording for the Declaration out of him. (I do agree with you that Paine was aces.)
Ah yes, a chance to use my favorite bigoted saying proudly…..”You know what they say, if you’re not Dutch, your not much”…..
thank you for said opportunity my dear.
Whenever I can be of help… =)
Robert Sherman: Wazzup?
Thomas Paine: Wazzup?
No wonder Jefferson looks disgusted.
As for the Dutch, they make nice paint.
LOL. Seriously, I went looking for paintings to photo shop for you, and when I saw this one, I almost passed it by because Robert Sherman looked so much like everyone I see every day with cell phones to their ears. Then I was all, “Wait, what?!? Cell phone?” I have no idea what he’s really doing, but when Tim saw it, he said something like, “Canst thou hear me now? Good!”
I about cracked up. I thought the same thing. Can thou hearest me now?
I think some cell company should take that and run with it!
Tim is FUNNY!
How did the Dutch get in there? I was always told that it was based on the Virginia Declaration Of Rights and the writings of Thomas Paine and other early American agitators and pamphleters. As far as who got involved in the actual writing, Jefferson wrote that the other members of the committee “unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections. . . I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress.”
Jefferson’s actual “fair copy” submitted to the Congress has not survived. However his rough draft, with changes made by Franklin and Adams, as well as Jefferson’s own notes of changes by the Congress, is housed at the Library of Congress.)
Yeah Becky what’s with you and the Dutch?
You and Greg pay no attention to the poor Dutch, crediting the French for shaping the colonists’ thinking and the way they wrote the Declaration of Independence.
However, some historians say our Declaration was modeled after the Dutch Act (or Oath) of Abjuration, which put forth the idea that rulers are responsible to the people and can be overthrown by the people. This is cited as a shift toward thinking of a nation as a republic with a constitutional form of government. The Dutch document was written in the 1500s, quite a while before Jefferson and Company picked up their quills.
Also, while the colonists may have been influenced by French thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau, their writings owed much to the philosophies of Locke–a Brit!
All I know is that some guy named Von makes really expensive jeans for the whole country … and honestly I am not even sure what country is there’s because there is no Dutch Land .. Why aren’t they called Hollish, or the Holls… because they like messing with the rest of us.