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     Ben Franklin would have jammed out to “Imagine” by John Lennon because it speaks of reason dictating what we do as a society instead of religious superstition or traditional thought patterns. Franklin says in his autobiography that he had “become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine…I took a delight in it…and grew very artful…in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not forsee…”(Franklin, 19). I believe that Lennon and Franklin would have something in common here. They both enjoyed using reason to lure people into their own beliefs and they both doubted the superiority of religion. You can see examples of this attitude in the following lyrics. Lennon sings, “Imagine there’s no Heaven/It’s easy if you try/No hell below us/ above us only sky” (ll. 1-4). Not only does Lennon sing this as if the absence of heaven and hell is a good thing but he also mentions that when they are gone the only thing left is a form of nature, “above us only sky”. Franklin would have appreciated that line seeing how it correlates perfectly with his deist beliefs. In the place of some mystical heaven you simply have the natural laws of nature above your head, the sky, which a deist would believe was created and abandoned by God. Franklin writes “Some books against Deism fell into my hands…It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists…appeared to me much stronger than the refutations… I soon became a thorough Deist” (Franklin, 58).  We see the extent of his Deist beliefs in this sentence. But there is more to Franklin than his Deist leanings and his love of John Lennon. He was also obsessed with moral perfection.

     Ben Franklin would have also enjoyed the song “A Better Version of Me” by Fiona Apple because she’s singing about focusing on self improvement, a hobby which Franklin had a great interest in. He would have used this as a kind of PEP song when preparing to improve himself.  Fiona sings “…after all the folderolling, hauling over coals stops/What did I learn?” (ll. 24-25). Here Apple is looking back at a painful experience and asking herself if she grew from it. Apple then sings “I am likely to miss the main event/If I stop to cry and complain again/So I will keep a deliberate pace/Let the damn breeze dry my face/Ooooh mister wait until you see/What I’m gonna be” (ll. 26-31). Here she’s saying that when she makes a mistake or the circumstances become too difficult she won’t succumb to hopelessness and give up. She’s saying that she’ll keep moving forward towards growth and not get caught up in self pity and eventually she’ll have become a better person. Franklin would use this song as a self motivator in following his own program of self improvement. Franklin writes in his Autobiography, “I wish’d to live without committing any fault at any time” (Franklin, 83). He created his own program to follow in order to improve his character. Sarah Alt wrote that Franklin, “…made a list of the vices that he thought were detrimental to his life and set about fixing them through means of a calendar in which he would check off the days he failed to suppress his urges” (Alt, “Franklin part 2”). Both Apple and Franklin commit to self improvement and don’t get bogged down by the challenges or the failures. This desire for self improvement was fueled by the age of enlightenment and the use of reason to solve problems. Franklin writes “I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish” (Franklin, 89). This last line speaks of his success in his efforts. Apple sings, “Here’s coming a better version of me/Here it comes a better version of me” (ll. 34-35). Both Franklin and Apple find success in their strategies for self improvement.  And the idea that I found the most appealing is that they discovered these strategies through their own process. They are not strategies grounded in the mindless following of another’s ideas. They are well thought out personalized endeavors of free thought and reason based logic. But Franklin wasn’t the only person who valued free thought and reason.

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     I suspect that a favorite song of Thomas Paine’s would have been “Opiate” by Tool because it mocks placing unquestioning dependence upon religion and would have been in alignment with The Enlightenment movement of his time. Paine was a brave man who looked past the dogma of religion and sought his own truth. Paine writes in his book The Age of Reason, “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church” (Paine). He is clearly rejecting a form of dependence on religion. In the song Opiate by Tool, Maynard James Keenan, the singer, sings the song as if he is a man of the cloth, he sings, “Choices always were a problem for you/What you need is someone strong to guide you/Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow/What you need is someone strong to guide you/Like me…” (ll. 1-5). Here we see that Maynard is mocking the weakness which comes along with following someone else blindly. Paine writes, “The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud” (Paine). Paine and Maynard both embody the “reason and philosophy” that he talks about. Maynard sings, “If you want to get your soul to heaven/trust in me now don’t you judge or question/You are broken now, but faith can heal you/Just do everything I tell you to do” (ll. 6-9). This line of reason clearly shows the driving force of fear based religions, and Paine attempted to fight against the same force. Alysha Kneeland sums up Pain’s ability to reason when she wrote, “He uses his rational mind to find his own truth. Truth cannot be taught. Experiences occur and through rational discernment of an experience truth will be the remainder” (Kneeland “Paine and Enlightenment”). But dependence upon religion wasn’t the only idea he fought against; he also fought against dependence on Great Brittan.

     Another song I suspect Paine would have on his iPod is “Song of Our Patriot” by Johnny Cash because it embodies a patriotic attitude that I think Paine would have appreciated. Cash sings of the reasons why America is great and is worth fighting for. Cash sings, “I’m a flag waving, patriotic nephew of my Uncle Sam/A rough riding fighting Yankee man/I love mom and apple pie/And the freedoms that we all enjoy across this beautiful land” (ll. 1-4). The image which those lyrics point to would have been a dream come true for Paine and many of his countrymen. He was on the cusp of such freedom and was trying to convince other’s to fight for it. Paine writes, “Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do: ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny, by keeping vacant the seat of government” (Paine, 100). I think what Paine opposed most was being babysat. Paine believed we were better than that, that we could make our own decisions. He had the same attitude towards religion and its tendency to offer a dependant state to their followers instead of encouraging free thought and action. In the end, Paine helped influence a nation to gain independence through his application of reason during the days of The Enlightenment.  

     Both Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine were individuals who valued the mind and everything it was capable of. They resisted systems where the individual placed dependence on another to live their lives. Maynard James Keenan (Tool), John Lennon, Fiona Apple, and Johnny Cash all embody this same sense of reason, the same ability to step back from life and ask themselves what certain beliefs held by society are actually worthy of praise. When Franklin and Paine viewed the world they saw it through their own eyes without the filter of society’s dogma and expectations. They were truly free men of mind and body. Maybe this inclination to be free was their main influence for their praise of an independent country.