Common Sense

Some time ago, Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, the second part of which is Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, made its way onto the reading list. The parallels between the issues faced by Americans then and Americans now are remarkable, with one key difference.  Then, the threats to liberty were posed by a country thousands of miles away that wanted to control the New World.  Today, the threats to liberty come from our own government, which has lost it way in a myriad of regulations, taxes, and progressive polices that bridle the American Spirit.  What follows is an observation of the parallels between then and now.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense outlines clear and concise arguments for why America needed to declare its independence from Great Britain.  Interestingly, and unfortunately, many of the arguments used in 1776 to justify independence from the crown can be used today to demonstrate how the United States has veered off course from the ideas of its original founding and the reasons it declared its independence.  Take, for instance, the reason for and role of government.  Paine argued a government is best in its simplest, least expensive form and is a necessary evil only because man himself is incapable of maintaining the order and security necessary for a society. He goes on to explain the simpler form a government takes, the less likely it is to be bogged down in disorder.  But the more complex the government, England for example, the more damage that could be done to the country, and the lesser chance anyone has of figuring out who is responsible, leaving politicians the ability to escape responsibility and point blame at others.  Sound familiar?

Paine goes into great detail to explain how representatives should be elected and what their role should be.  He argues they should be elected often enough so as to have to re-enter the population so they will live under the same laws as the population and not have any incentive to make special laws for themselves.  If this is the case, the representative will have a stronger desire to act the same as those who he represents, since he will have to live under the same laws he passes.  “On this,” Paine writes, “depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.”

Paine ridicules the British government as being a farce.  It placed the king in the position of having to make decisions affecting those from which he is so insulated and out of touch, he could never make the best decision for them.  And while not an absolute monarchy, it essentially acted as one, with the king’s decrees being handed out by parliament instead of directly from the king.  While there is the appearance of a balance government with checks and balances, the king had the ultimate authority.  Paine describes it this way, “for as the greater weight will always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power in the constitution has the most weight, for that will govern; and though the others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it, their endeavors will be ineffectual; the first moving power will at last have its way, and what it wants in speed is supplied by time.”

So does America today align more with the ideas of small, effective government, ruled by citizen legislators or with the heavy handed authoritarian approach of the British monarchy?  More and more, the government is taking the role of the King of England, choosing to serve its own interest at the expense of the citizenry.  But instead of a king, we have presidents who think they know best and a willing bedfellow in the political class that purports to represent the people, but never seem to do what they promised during the election once they get into office.  The president changes laws with a wink and a nod under regulatory cover and a complacent congress does little or nothing to stand in the way.  The president is the “greater weight” Paine spoke of, congress the “clog”, and the court system eventually makes the payoff of time down the road and sides with the government against the will of the people.  Substitute American with citizens and British/England with the federal government, and the following quote form Thomas Paine is as applicable today as it was over 200 years ago.  “America is only a secondary object in the system of British politics – England consults the good of this country, no farther than it answers her own purpose.  Wherefore, her own interests leads her to suppress the growth of ours in every case which doth not promote her advantage, or in the least interferes with it.”  Simply put, today’s citizens are a means to an end for the political class - just votes on Election Day and then forgotten after that.  By that point the people have served their purpose of letting the political class continue to rule over them until the next election cycle, at which point they will again pretend to care and tolerate them just enough to get voted into office once again.  And miraculously, despite pathetic approval ratings and scandal after scandal, the same politicians are sent to Washington election after election.  This proves Paine’s point that a complex government simply gives cover to those responsible for the mess.  Today’s politicians have perfected the art of shifting the blame to the other guy, party, or branch of government.  No one is responsible for anything within the government – from the president to the congress, down to the lowest level bureaucrat.

It seems around every turn is an attempt by government to regulate, or otherwise restrain the prosperity and productivity of the American people, whether through regulation, taxation, or both.  Why is it that government and the political class wish to control every aspect of our lives?  Paine asks an interesting question.  “Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us?”  This is just as true today as it was then.  Why does the government have such an interest in keeping its citizenry cut down to size?  Why are they always playing one group against another?  The answer is simple.  As long as everyone is fighting among themselves, government gets to step in under the guise of fairness and dictate the rules of the game.  They only want you to succeed to a point, but never beyond the point at which you realize government is more of a hindrance than a help.  In this way, government is very jealous.  If you can make it on your own, you do not need government to direct every aspect of your life.  Therefore, government and the political class have a huge stake in making sure you will only succeed playing by their rules, thus perpetuating their invented necessity.

Just as the colonists had to come to grips with their reality before declaring their independence from an oppressive king over 200 years ago, Americans today need to realize their government has slowly, and over time, became the behemoth from which their forefathers declared their independence.  To many, this seems like it cannot be true, and all the freedoms and liberties we enjoy today, even though watered down in many ways, are a historical reality that can never be taken away.  They live life as if this is just the way things are and the way thing will always be.  But that does not have to be the case.  Not if we take our liberties for granted and let our guard down, allowing government intrusion into every aspect of our lives.  If we sell the American soul in the name of convenience, fairness and security, we will wake up one day and realize we have neither.  Hopefully it is not too late.