As we turn the page to a new calendar year, here’s hoping that 2020 is (a) as interesting as the year just past, while being (b) a bit more productive of freedom, accountability, and all the good stuff we strive to achieve in our personal, family, business and community lives.
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What? Oh, sure, I know the United States of America has its birthday on July 4th, that day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
Let’s agree I’m early. (Oh, how I wish it were July.)
But the interesting thing about history is how we get to those moments wherein the great “we” declare our independence or fill the streets or storm the beaches — or the polls. The many big, important days that lead to THE day.
Today is such a date, because 242 years ago on January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense. Without this day 242 years ago, we wouldn’t have had Independence Day six months later.
Using common and direct language, and speaking to all the “inhabitants of America,” Common Sense made the case for both independence from Britain and the establishment of a democratic republic. Boy, did it make the case. On a per capita basis, Paine’s pamphlet is the bestselling American publication in history.
His pamphlet or parts were read publicly, reprinted in newspapers and spread throughout the colonies. This common man — barely an American,* having landed on our shores in November 1774 — used the universal language, speaking truth to power.
“Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression,” Paine told his fellow Americans. “Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”
The original idea of these United States was freedom.
And that, my friends, is Common Sense. (I’m Paul Jacob.)
* Of course, this makes Paine almost quintessentially American.
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
Quote (from Paine’s “Common Sense”) verified here.
In Common Sense, his incredible hit pamphlet of 1776, Tom Paine appealed to “the inhabitants of America”:
O ye that love mankind! . . . Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger,and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
Today . . . well, our country might be mistaken for an asylum. Just not the type envisioned by Mr. Paine
Worse still, freedom in America is under consistent attack.
Following the Orlando terrorist massacre (and don’t forget, “hate crime”), who could be surprised at yet another rush to infringe on Second Amendment rights by legislation? But I must admit I was still naïve enough to be shocked that not a thought was given to making our Fifth Amendment rights to due process so much collateral damage.
Secretly writing names on a classified list, whether you call it a “no-fly list” or the “terrorist watch list,” and using merely that to bureaucratically deny citizens fundamental rights (“top ten” rights, as in No. 2 and No. 5 in the Bill of) is no process of law at all.
Who could so cavalierly toss away the very bedrock of our freedom? It’s as if our so-called representatives don’t give a hoot about our rights.
Common Sense readers are well aware that two years ago every Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted to repeal the key freedom of speech provision of the First Amendment. The goal was to completely reverse the current wording of “Congress shall make no law” with new wording that incumbent legislators in “Congress and the States may regulate . . . the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.”
The amendment didn’t pass. Thankfully. But, frighteningly, it continues to be promoted. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has endorsed it. Most folks are ignorant about the extremism of the approach, because the media reports mainly that the amendment reverses Citizens United, something the amendment actually doesn’t do.
The amendment simply awards Congress so much power that the highly-disapproved body could do almost anything.
Most people also don’t realize that the Citizens United case was about the Federal Election Commission (FEC) censoring advertising for a movie about Hillary Clinton, produced by a non-profit corporation.
Speaking of government censorship of the press, the FEC had been threatening Fox News with major fines for making corporate contributions to 17 GOP presidential candidates. What happened? The cable news channel decided to expand from a single debate featuring 10 candidates to two debates with the earlier “undercard” debate featuring an additional 7 candidates. A candidate not chosen to be one of the 17 candidates filed a complaint against Fox, alleging it amounted to an illegal contribution to all 17 candidates.
The FEC recently closed the case without beating up the disfavored news channel only because three Republican commissioners blocked three Democrats. The case should not only be closed, it should never have been brought in the first place. We don’t want our government dictating to the media about political debate coverage.
Or anything else.
And how can major federal agencies provide equal protection to all citizens, when they are staffed according to political party to provide protection for Republicans and Democrats? More of us are independents than either Rs or Ds.
The war against political participation isn’t confined to Washington. I know from my ordeal in Oklahoma nearly a decade ago, when for assisting initiative petition campaigns for a spending cap and eminent domain reform, I was charged with conspiracy to defraud the state and threatened with ten years in prison . . . until a year and a half later when, without ever completing even a preliminary court hearing, the charge was dismissed.
I’ve seen Eric O’Keefe and other brave citizens in Wisconsin endure dawn SWAT-style police raids for the awful crime of campaigning in favor of government policies they support.
And, of course, how can we forget that no one has been held in any way accountable for the years that the IRS blocked the formation of Tea Party and conservative and libertarian groups?
This country is in trouble.
In addition to the assaults on our rights, especially the right to participate politically, there is the dysfunction at all levels of government. Among the big national problems of massive debt and constant war, we find smaller local issues that signal a deeper, bigger problem.
Common Sense has long covered the school kid suspended for drawing a gun or eating one’s PB&J sandwich into a pistol or the school that photo-shopped out the musket from their Minuteman mascot. This last year we followed many of the twists and turns to the story of the Meitivs, the Maryland family that dared allow their two children, ten and six years of age, to walk home from a public park. The children were obviously well cared for, but nonetheless they were picked up and held by police several times and the parents were long threatened with losing their kids.
It took over a year for the authoritarians with Child Protective Services to agree that kids walking home from a park in broad daylight did not constitute prima facie evidence of child abuse or neglect. And to agree to leave the poor Meitiv family alone.
Common Sense has also highlighted the racketeering being done by police forces federal, state and local through what’s known as civil asset forfeiture — again, a complete denial of basic rights. Under current law — or more correctly, lawlessness — police can take people’s property and money when detaining them and then keep it, even if the person is never convicted of a crime, or even charged.
This suspension of the fundamental concept of “innocent until proven guilty” must not stand.
But who is going to stop it? Not just this one outrageous rip-off, but the whole societal slide to a system where individuals have no rights, especially if they lost the last election, and government makes more and more of our decisions for us.
Hillary Clinton?
Donald Trump?
Your state’s legislators? Your city council? Your congressman?
You and I must stop the erosion of our liberties. We have the tools — especially with state and local ballot initiatives available to most of us, allowing us to seize the agenda at the time and on the issue(s) of our choosing.
Liberty Initiative Fund works with Liberty Initiators across the country to hold government accountable, fight crony capitalism and protect our liberties through state and local ballot initiatives. Contributions are not tax deductible, but pack a powerful punch for liberty.
The Foundation also supports Common Sense, which I offer the modern inhabitants of America to help keep us focused on the most important problems we face, with intermittent seriousness and humor, as well as uniting active allies from across the country, each pursuing their own issues in their own communities.
Today, I’ll enjoy being with the people I love and I’ll take some time to celebrate the birthright of freedom forged for you and me 240 years ago.
But I won’t pretend that freedom will be there for me or for mine unless together we forge our future freedom anew.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Credit George Washington for mobilizing our military to win the Revolutionary War. It was Thomas Paine, though, who did the most to mobilize the people in support of the cause of freedom and independence from Britain. He did it with his stirring pamphlet, Common Sense.
Originally published anonymously on this very date 235 years ago, and addressed to “the Inhabitants of America,” Paine’s polemic circulated to a higher percentage of the American population than any book save the Bible.
One reason for its success was Paine’s style, which was much more accessible to the common person than most political writing of that time. In fact, Common Sense was read aloud in public, allowing citizens who lacked letters to engage in the debate over separation from the British empire — some seven months before the Declaration of Independence.
Common Sense attacked both the evils of monarchy, generally, noting that “Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins . . .” and the British monarchy specifically, referring to William the Conqueror as a “French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives.”
Paine’s pamphlet cogently endorsed republican forms of future government. “Society in every state is a blessing,” he wrote, “but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. . . .”
More than two centuries after its publication, Paine’s message still rings prophetic: “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”
That remains true. And Paine’s mission remains ours: To resist tyranny, to “prepare an asylum for mankind.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.