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July 13, 2006
Relevant Words From Paine's Common Sense
Relevant Words From Paine's Common Sense
The following is from Thomas Paine's 1776 Common Sense, a pamphlet very influential on the side of the American Revolution. Within a few weeks of its publication, over 100,000 copies were sold. Paul Johnson in his A History of the American People claims "it was the most successful and influential pamphlet ever published." (p. 154)
We are now in revolutionary times of a different order than he wrote about. The battle for the freedom and independence of the American colonies from Great Britain was won. We are now engaged in another battle, this time for the world-wide freedom and independence of all people from their masters, especially those billions enslaved by thug regimes. In this battle, the opening words of Paine's pamphlet are equally relevant. Even more since he was a classic liberal who like Kant, de Montesquieu, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill, believed in a classic liberal (democratic) peace. He wrote (quoted in Michael Howard, War And The Liberal Conscious, 1978, p. 29):
Government on the old system is an assumption of power, for the aggrandizement of itself; on the new [Republican form of government as just established in the United States], a delegation of power for the common benefit of society. The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter promotes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation.
Now, from Common Sense:
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.(continued here
Posted by Rudy at July 13, 2006 10:16 PM
