It was Thomas Paine who wrote Common Sense that finally moved the American Colonists to revolution (it is worth a good read).
“PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not
yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; 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. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more
converts than reason.
….
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to
leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not
only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by
our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former
promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the
latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages
intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the
last a punisher.
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 calamities 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 on 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. Wherefore, security being the true design… “
You must be logged in to post a comment.