CAN ANYONE FIND SOMETHING PAINE SAID OR DID THAT WAS INAPPROPRIATE?

I’m a fifth-grade teacher in Colorado, and an crucial part of teaching civics is providing students with our primary sources: the founding documents. This is critical in understanding what “We the People” means. Today, like 230 years ago, those documents instill in students the belief that all voices are important. Every one of our citizens are needed to pursue liberty. Futures do not have to be inevitable and “Little voices” can make dramatic impacts on events. That is Paine’s greatest contribution to our country. His pamphlet, Common Sense, spoke to all the voices in the 13 colonies during a time of great indecision. He gave a vast number of citizens a vision of what each could do, 176 days before the Declaration. A belief that power should radiate from the citizens. That message is still foundational for all our students today.

Mark Wilensky,
author of “The Elementary Common Sense of Thomas Paine: An Interactive Adaptation for All Ages”

Celebrate this day by going and reading ‘Common Sense’ by Thomas Paine. It can be found free online at http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/singlehtml.htm

“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least.”

or ....

“I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered; and with this maxim in view I offer a few remarks on the so much boasted constitution of England. That it was noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected, is granted. When the world was overrun with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise is easily demonstrated.

Absolute governments, (tho’ the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs; know likewise the remedy; and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures. But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.”

Gee, that sounds kinda relevant to today, doesn’t it?

Go read the piece.  There’s more great writing in there.  I won’t clog up the thread here by copying any more. 

I think it’s safe to say that, morally and ethically, organized religion is a failure on a worldwide basis.

WE need to find a new national spirituality——One that is NOT mass-organized,
that emphasizes ethical behavior without depending on fear of a mythical hell as motivation.

Emerson’s and Thoreau’s Transcendentalism is perhaps the best solution to this problem.

Most people seem to get religious only because they fear death and the unknown and desire a bandaid to cover the fear with.

I suppose we’ll have better religion when we have better people.