October 7th, 2006

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In 1776, Thomas Paine published a pamphlet entitled, Common Sense. You might have read it in highschool, or given the disaffected nature and assumed prerogative characteristic of so many American youth, you might have dismissed the assignment as a waste of time. capitol

In view of the fact that a great majority of American’s prefer watching television to reading, it would be pure foolishness to expect even you dear persistent reader, to spend the thirty minutes required to read the work in its entirety. As such, a single paragraph from, Common Sense, illustrating Thomas Paine’s extraordinary prescience is presented to arouse one’s common sense to the goings on both in our nation and around the world. One hopes that your attention span has not atrophied to the extent that you find it nonsensical.

But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked, and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

It may seem to some that the white light of virtue and reason has dimmed while under the charge of those imprudent politicians responsible for protecting and nuturing such. The uncertainty that thives in the growing shadows stirs each of us to action; revealing those in power who are instead drawn like moths to flit about the sickly yellow flouresence of power and exploitation. Together we can make the light to shine even more brightly than it did before it was so wrongfully neglected. Be certain to vote and remind others to do the same. Voting is both a right and a responsibility.

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