Happy Thanksgiving

Let's give thanks for those who stand for reason in the darkest
times.


Thomas Paine is nearly forgotten, was buried in obscurity in a
pauper's grave.  But he wrote the words that gave the American
colonies the will to fight tyranny.  Before Common Sense, the
call for independence was a marginal position espoused by John
Adams, and the colonial delegates spent their days debating how
best to convey to England that they opposed the acts of
Parliament and not the crown.  Thomas Paine wrote The Crisis for
George Washington to read to his dejected army in the darkest
days of the Revolution, in the winter of Valley Forge.  Thomas
Paine faced death and imprisonment rather than vote to execute
the king in the French Revolution.


Seth


> http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Thomas_Paine


Common Sense:

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

---

The Crisis:

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and
the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the
service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the
love and thanks of man and woman.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more
glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too
lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like
men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make
room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather
strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the
business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm,
and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his
principles unto death.

---

The Rights of Man:

The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do
good is my religion.

If law be bad, it is one thing to oppose the practice of it, but
it is quite a different thing to expose its errors to reason on
its defects, and to show cause why it should be repealed, or why
another ought to be substituted in its place. I have always held
it an opinion (making it also my practice) that it is better to
obey a bad law, making use at the same time of every argument to
show its errors and procure its repeal, than forcibly to violate
it; because the precedent of breaking a bad law might weaken the
force, and lead to a discretionary violation, of those which are
good.

---

Dissertation on the First Principles of Government:

The true and only true basis of representative government is
equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no
more in the choice of representatives. The rich have no more
right to exclude the poor from the right of voting, or of
electing and being elected, than the poor have to exclude the
rich; and wherever it is attempted, or proposed, on either side,
it is a question of force and not of right. Who is he that would
exclude another? That other has a right to exclude him.

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by
which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to
reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to
the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election
of representatives is in this case.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his
enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he
establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

---

The Age of Reason:

Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child cannot be
a true system.

---


Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been
wielded in vain. -- John Adams
 	

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