Actually, despite having grown up with Paine as my Revolutionary hero, even visiting his place of demise in Greenwich Village, NYC, it was both his radical atheism and indefensible defence of the French Revolution that got him poor, disreputable, and reviled.
Paine, like GenZ, did not appreciate nor defend the same youthful truths today that I grew up with in family of carpenters and buildings. Namely, that it is always easier to destroy than to create.
Wrong again. He wasn't an atheist. He openly rejected atheism. He also defended the French Revolution's republican principles but hated the Jacobins who locked him up for 11 months, which left him ill, and who wanted his head in a basket.
Never Claimed TP was and atheist. (he was deist like BF, TJ and Isaac Newton) But he had plenty of opportunities to denounce the destruction of churches and the killing of clergy both while in office in France and after his departure. It's his drift from legit rebel to radical revolutionary that, for me, went too far. ⚠️ Handle TP with Care.
Our digital moment is becoming a golden age of pamphleteers. Surely we have some new Thomas Paines on the way--perhaps among independent-minded, impatient, passionate young people born in this new century.
One of the most powerful and important principles Paine emphasized in Common Sense was the need for people to think for themselves and to think anew. Merely “a long Habit of not thinking a Thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of Custom.” “Time,” in this manner “makes more converts than Reason.” But “a new aera for politics is struck, a new method of thinking hath arisen.”
Paine highlighted the truth about how labels commonly deter thought and even are counter to common sense. The writer sought to cause “the reader” to “divest himself of prejudice and prepossession” and to consider “the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.” Paine promised “nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.”
“Men” use “names without understanding them.” That included “the unmeaning name of king.” “Men who” see “themselves born to reign, and others to obey” are “poisoned by importance; and” their “world” clearly “differs so materially from the [real] world” that “when they succeed” in obtaining power, they “are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any” to actually govern. “Most wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated” the pretenses of such people in power “with contempt; yet” such pretenses are among “those evils” which, “when once established,” are “not easily removed.”
The part about slavery being a giant stain has worn itself out. We all know that slavery was pervasive everywhere, not an invention of the founding fathers.
It is with, and only with, the creation of the federal government that the mechanism for dismantling slavery in North America came into being.
🇩🇿 Albert Camus ⚜️ wrote an incredible essay, The Rebel. 🕰️✍🏼 He very carefully lays out a boundary beyond which, we must say, "no". The limit between a legitimate rebellion against a real injustice must NOT be crossed over into the tyranny ⛓️ that is so often made manifest in the behavior of the zealous revolutionary.
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many" (no matter how they are given or usurp such power) "may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." Any person or group of persons with too much power pose an existential threat to national security. "[T]he preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu."
"Montesquieu" was famous for emphasizing the following. "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates," or, "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers." "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body," says he, "there can be no liberty, because [ ] THE SAME monarch or senate [c]ould ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner. " "Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR."
Separation of powers? Today the three branches of the federal government are an illusion. There are two supreme powers, the democrat and republican parties. Their battle for control of us is not much different than the behavior of royal families of the past.
Today, we have government of the parties, by the parties, and for the parties.
Fair point. But that's one of the problems that our Constitution was designed to prevent.
In Federalist 10. James Madison (lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights) emphasized that our Constitution was designed to provide "a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government." Such diseases obviously include "faction," which can easily result in a "tyranny of the majority," as Tocqueville emphasized in his book "Democracy In America." So Madison explained that "[t]o secure the public good and private rights against the danger of [any] faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our [Constitution is] directed."
I highly recommend Camus' Essay. ⚠️ We are talking about Thomas Paine. Guillotines, Gulags, Gas Chambers and 'dynamite outrages'🧨 were the inevitable and logical 19th/20th century extension and outcome of his overzealous 'rights of man' humanist philosophy..... Dostoevsky's "Demons".
If I understand you correctly, you're blaming Paine for the excesses of people who invoked his name. Bad people doing bad things always have invoked the good words and good names of far better people to justify evil deeds. That's the reason for the truism that the devil can cite scripture for his own purposes.
It's worth noting more of Paine's words (and the common sense of the people) in Common Sense:
Paine exposed and opposed “the constitutional errors in the English form of government” and supported the “constitution of the people” that will protect the People from “a rotten constitution of government.”
In 1776, the United States was declared and created with “wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name.” “We” (the People by our Declaration of Independence in 1776 and our Constitution in 1787) simply seized and appropriately exercised “our power to begin the world over again.” Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution actually were and are “the legal voice of the people.” They afforded the People the “opportunity” to “form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth.” Each such “charter” was “a bond of solemn obligation, which the whole enters into, to support the right of every separate part,” including regarding “personal freedom.” The “design and end of government” is and must be the “freedom and security” of the People.
Six months before our Declaration of Independence (essentially our wartime constitution), Paine advocated “a CONTINENTAL CHARTER, or Charter of the United Colonies.” Common Sense and our Declaration of Independence (like our later Constitution) emphasized that “in America, THE LAW IS KING” for “in free countries the Law” alone “ought to be King.”
Paine even proposed that an actual “crown” be used in a coronation “ceremony” for our “Charter” (our Constitution) after which the “crown” would be “demolished” and scattered among the people whose right it is” to govern themselves. Comon Sense stood for the same principle as our current Constitution and all current state constitutions: “A government of our own is our natural right” and we should “form a constitution of our own” to secure that right.
Dude, I get it. I'm a hardcore 2A Deplorable. I just feel that TP must be viewed with caution. Lots of guys I know really back him up and would probably man the barricades 🇨🇵 for his ideas, but for me, his drift went beyond the limit. CAMUS treats this condition with respect and I think the Algerian 🇩🇿 gets it right. 🗽✍🏼⚖️
Camus ✍🏼⚖️ was really commenting upon the action and attitude of 'man in revolt' (The Rebel) in the aftermath of the jacobins, bolshevics and national socialists. How easy it is for "incorruptibes" like Saint-Just and Robespierre to morph into a "Committee of Public Safety" loading citizens into tumblers on nine days out of ten......
I'll bite. How did Paine cross a line? He was against the Jacobins, who almost had his head because he argued against the execution of King XVI because the point was to destroy the institution not murder the man.
I just feel that his drift from "Common Sense" to "The Age of Reason" opened a door that went beyond the sure grounds of a Theological limit.
He moved ⛪ from rebel to revolutionary to seeking to openly oppose the church. Those teaching have consequences for everyone in the polis, whether you are a believer or not...
Huh. So he was a deist who didn't believe in revealed religion and actually thought it was downright harmful. That said, he believed in god and thought creation demonstrated his love and that you didn't need more scaffolding. Why churches should get a pass and be beyond reproach and criticism seems weird in a liberal democracy with separation of church and state.
I just see TP in our epoch following ⚒️ Mao, Ché or the DSA. He, for me, crossed the line that I believe Camus lays out quite well. Camus was also not a big fan of organized religion, but I think he understood where paine's 🥸✍🏼 later writings would lead the masses......📯🩸⚰️⚰️⚰️
Fair enough. But what is such "man in revolt" except people assuming the power of all 3 branches of government? Such "man in revolt" is nothing less than (to use the words of Montesquieu and Madison) "[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many."
“Common Sense still has a lot to say—about the nature of tyrants and gangsters, the benefits of representative government, the desire for religious freedom, and the downsides of wealth, not to mention a great deal about political equality and the universal rights of humankind”
Actually, despite having grown up with Paine as my Revolutionary hero, even visiting his place of demise in Greenwich Village, NYC, it was both his radical atheism and indefensible defence of the French Revolution that got him poor, disreputable, and reviled.
Paine, like GenZ, did not appreciate nor defend the same youthful truths today that I grew up with in family of carpenters and buildings. Namely, that it is always easier to destroy than to create.
Exactly
Wrong again. He wasn't an atheist. He openly rejected atheism. He also defended the French Revolution's republican principles but hated the Jacobins who locked him up for 11 months, which left him ill, and who wanted his head in a basket.
Never Claimed TP was and atheist. (he was deist like BF, TJ and Isaac Newton) But he had plenty of opportunities to denounce the destruction of churches and the killing of clergy both while in office in France and after his departure. It's his drift from legit rebel to radical revolutionary that, for me, went too far. ⚠️ Handle TP with Care.
Our digital moment is becoming a golden age of pamphleteers. Surely we have some new Thomas Paines on the way--perhaps among independent-minded, impatient, passionate young people born in this new century.
One of the most powerful and important principles Paine emphasized in Common Sense was the need for people to think for themselves and to think anew. Merely “a long Habit of not thinking a Thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of Custom.” “Time,” in this manner “makes more converts than Reason.” But “a new aera for politics is struck, a new method of thinking hath arisen.”
Paine highlighted the truth about how labels commonly deter thought and even are counter to common sense. The writer sought to cause “the reader” to “divest himself of prejudice and prepossession” and to consider “the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.” Paine promised “nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.”
“Men” use “names without understanding them.” That included “the unmeaning name of king.” “Men who” see “themselves born to reign, and others to obey” are “poisoned by importance; and” their “world” clearly “differs so materially from the [real] world” that “when they succeed” in obtaining power, they “are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any” to actually govern. “Most wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated” the pretenses of such people in power “with contempt; yet” such pretenses are among “those evils” which, “when once established,” are “not easily removed.”
I wrote this to Greg’s reposting of the article (which I did read) earlier this morning:
https://substack.com/profile/284385672-boulis/note/c-287347858?r=4pbde0&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Happy Fourth everyone!
The part about slavery being a giant stain has worn itself out. We all know that slavery was pervasive everywhere, not an invention of the founding fathers.
It is with, and only with, the creation of the federal government that the mechanism for dismantling slavery in North America came into being.
🇩🇿 Albert Camus ⚜️ wrote an incredible essay, The Rebel. 🕰️✍🏼 He very carefully lays out a boundary beyond which, we must say, "no". The limit between a legitimate rebellion against a real injustice must NOT be crossed over into the tyranny ⛓️ that is so often made manifest in the behavior of the zealous revolutionary.
GRACE❤️🔥 AND PEACE⛲ TO YOU LOVED ONES,
Semper Fortis / Acta non Verba / 😌 🇺🇲🗽📯🕊️⚓
That sounds like something that, to convince people to ratify the original Constitution, James Madison highlighted in the Federalist Papers (No. 47 https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-41-50#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493412) in 1788 (quoting Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws in 1754):
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many" (no matter how they are given or usurp such power) "may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." Any person or group of persons with too much power pose an existential threat to national security. "[T]he preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu."
"Montesquieu" was famous for emphasizing the following. "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates," or, "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers." "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body," says he, "there can be no liberty, because [ ] THE SAME monarch or senate [c]ould ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner. " "Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR."
Separation of powers? Today the three branches of the federal government are an illusion. There are two supreme powers, the democrat and republican parties. Their battle for control of us is not much different than the behavior of royal families of the past.
Today, we have government of the parties, by the parties, and for the parties.
Fair point. But that's one of the problems that our Constitution was designed to prevent.
In Federalist 10. James Madison (lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights) emphasized that our Constitution was designed to provide "a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government." Such diseases obviously include "faction," which can easily result in a "tyranny of the majority," as Tocqueville emphasized in his book "Democracy In America." So Madison explained that "[t]o secure the public good and private rights against the danger of [any] faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our [Constitution is] directed."
The irony is that Madison was a key player in the establishment of the two political parties that have rendered the constitution essentially moot.
I highly recommend Camus' Essay. ⚠️ We are talking about Thomas Paine. Guillotines, Gulags, Gas Chambers and 'dynamite outrages'🧨 were the inevitable and logical 19th/20th century extension and outcome of his overzealous 'rights of man' humanist philosophy..... Dostoevsky's "Demons".
If I understand you correctly, you're blaming Paine for the excesses of people who invoked his name. Bad people doing bad things always have invoked the good words and good names of far better people to justify evil deeds. That's the reason for the truism that the devil can cite scripture for his own purposes.
It's worth noting more of Paine's words (and the common sense of the people) in Common Sense:
Paine exposed and opposed “the constitutional errors in the English form of government” and supported the “constitution of the people” that will protect the People from “a rotten constitution of government.”
In 1776, the United States was declared and created with “wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name.” “We” (the People by our Declaration of Independence in 1776 and our Constitution in 1787) simply seized and appropriately exercised “our power to begin the world over again.” Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution actually were and are “the legal voice of the people.” They afforded the People the “opportunity” to “form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth.” Each such “charter” was “a bond of solemn obligation, which the whole enters into, to support the right of every separate part,” including regarding “personal freedom.” The “design and end of government” is and must be the “freedom and security” of the People.
Six months before our Declaration of Independence (essentially our wartime constitution), Paine advocated “a CONTINENTAL CHARTER, or Charter of the United Colonies.” Common Sense and our Declaration of Independence (like our later Constitution) emphasized that “in America, THE LAW IS KING” for “in free countries the Law” alone “ought to be King.”
Paine even proposed that an actual “crown” be used in a coronation “ceremony” for our “Charter” (our Constitution) after which the “crown” would be “demolished” and scattered among the people whose right it is” to govern themselves. Comon Sense stood for the same principle as our current Constitution and all current state constitutions: “A government of our own is our natural right” and we should “form a constitution of our own” to secure that right.
Dude, I get it. I'm a hardcore 2A Deplorable. I just feel that TP must be viewed with caution. Lots of guys I know really back him up and would probably man the barricades 🇨🇵 for his ideas, but for me, his drift went beyond the limit. CAMUS treats this condition with respect and I think the Algerian 🇩🇿 gets it right. 🗽✍🏼⚖️
Follow the money......🔎💰💸🎩🏦🔎💰💸🎩🏦💲
Camus ✍🏼⚖️ was really commenting upon the action and attitude of 'man in revolt' (The Rebel) in the aftermath of the jacobins, bolshevics and national socialists. How easy it is for "incorruptibes" like Saint-Just and Robespierre to morph into a "Committee of Public Safety" loading citizens into tumblers on nine days out of ten......
.....Thomas Paine, for me, crossed the line.🔪🩸💀
I'll bite. How did Paine cross a line? He was against the Jacobins, who almost had his head because he argued against the execution of King XVI because the point was to destroy the institution not murder the man.
I just feel that his drift from "Common Sense" to "The Age of Reason" opened a door that went beyond the sure grounds of a Theological limit.
He moved ⛪ from rebel to revolutionary to seeking to openly oppose the church. Those teaching have consequences for everyone in the polis, whether you are a believer or not...
Huh. So he was a deist who didn't believe in revealed religion and actually thought it was downright harmful. That said, he believed in god and thought creation demonstrated his love and that you didn't need more scaffolding. Why churches should get a pass and be beyond reproach and criticism seems weird in a liberal democracy with separation of church and state.
I just see TP in our epoch following ⚒️ Mao, Ché or the DSA. He, for me, crossed the line that I believe Camus lays out quite well. Camus was also not a big fan of organized religion, but I think he understood where paine's 🥸✍🏼 later writings would lead the masses......📯🩸⚰️⚰️⚰️
Fair enough. But what is such "man in revolt" except people assuming the power of all 3 branches of government? Such "man in revolt" is nothing less than (to use the words of Montesquieu and Madison) "[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many."
With TP, I tend to look at rebellion and revolt, not governance at all. He was never cut out to govern or manage much of anything. He was a rebel.
😬🩸 Be careful what you wish for! 🇨🇵🔪💀⚠️
Nah, he doesn't. He was a crazy leftist of the time and wrong about everything.
Some excerpts of Common Sense for anyone looking for a refresher -> https://substack.com/@brianjayjohnson/note/p-184396596?r=bhzf&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
“Common Sense still has a lot to say—about the nature of tyrants and gangsters, the benefits of representative government, the desire for religious freedom, and the downsides of wealth, not to mention a great deal about political equality and the universal rights of humankind”