Why Thomas Paine's Common Sense Pamphlet Is Important

Why Thomas Paine's Common Sense Pamphlet Is Important

Published: January 06, 2014 - By John Jay of Criminal Justice

Cornel West, Princeton University Professor, with Chris Hedges of The Nation Institute and Richard Wolff, Economic Professor at University of Massachusetts, discuss the legendary true freedom activist and writer Thomas Paine at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, one of the all-time American bestsellers, exploded on the scene in January 1776, at a precarious moment when reconciliation with Britain seemed unlikely yet, to many, independence still seemed unthinkable. In electric prose, Paine, a recent English immigrant, made a forceful case in defense of separation. The pamphlet radiated a radical democratic spirit. In plain, unadorned writing, it appealed to the common capacities of all people to evaluate the case for independence. It left few traditional hierarchies untouched, meanwhile, nowhere more strikingly than its vigorous condemnation of the institution of monarchy, which Paine claimed was in fact an insult to God. Common Sense seized public opinion, propelling American colonists toward independence.

Common Sense - By Thomas Paine (1776) - Introduction

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; 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 defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his own right, to support the parliament in what he calls theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either. In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion. The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the author.”

THE AUTHOR - Philadelphia, February 14, 1776
https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1776ThomasPaine.pdf

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