Here is the link to "Common Sense" as written by Thomas Paine. The purpose of sharing this is to start other people forming their own opinions on it's meaning and relevence. 'Forewarned is forarmed' is not just a trite cliché! http://www.constitution.org/tp/comsense.htm I will post my perspectives and hopefully the full piece tomorrow with access to more than a mobile device. Perspectives will be posted as a seperate post to encourage discussion that wont be confused with theoriginal document. Copy and paste seems to be beyond the capabilities of my tablet (or perhaps it's user) so please bear with me as I re-type this document. If you point out errors, I will correct them so as to provide the correct form of the document. -Common Sense, by Thomas Paine [1776] INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION 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 desfense of custom. But 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 that 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 priveledge to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations 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 that 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. |
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Contributors > Midwestern War Child >
Reflections 1 ~ Common Sense Introductionposted Dec 2, 2011 8:40 PM by sarah steadman [ updated Dec 5, 2011 10:43 AM ] |
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