It’s Just Common Sense

This election cycle has called into question the fundamental role of government in our society. 

Thomas Paine was of the opinion that, “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.”

The outcome of Nevada’s caucuses over the weekend served to further highlight the growing divide in American thought over the proper scope of government influence and interference. 

Thomas Paine, a prominent voice in the days leading up to the American Revolution, once said that, “Wherefore security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”

This quote perfectly packages the disparity between the platforms of Nevada’s two victors: Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.

Government’s fundamental purpose in a society is the security of that nation – not their happiness, their wealth, their health or their purpose. It is a basic conservative principle that the government does not give you your rights but that a government is instituted to protect the rights every individual inherently possesses. 

Back in 1776, an era where there were far fewer media options competing for your time and eyes, Thomas Paine wrote and published a pamphlet titled Common Sense. The publication was so widely spread among the colonists that its only modern equivalent could be the average number of eyes that watch the Super Bowl. Today, the piece is heralded as one of the critical writings of the Revolutionary period as it instilled a basis for argument in the colonists to overthrow the tyrannical British monarchy. 

Paine went against the grain of his day and proposed something contrary to the status quo. In a day filled with nations ruled by a monarchy of some sort, he proposed a government led first and foremost by the people.

After living in the United States for only two years, Thomas Paine grasped the futility of revised representation from Britain. He could plainly see the oppressive results of the mother country’s tyranny and foresaw that the colonies would be unable to reconcile with her.

Refugees fleeing socialist countries today left to protect themselves and their families from overly powerful and intrusive regimes – not to find themselves with what appears will be a presidential nominee that champions the very ideologies they fled their countries to escape. 

Likewise, at the time of Common Sense’s publication, numerous immigrants were traveling to America’s shores to escape their own oppressive governments. 

Paine wrote, ““Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America.  This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.  Hither they have fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.”

Today, candidates with socialist sounding agendas purport that all other nations have public healthcare and that we ought to emulate their model. What they are not saying is how damaging that will be to the overall economy. They say they want to create a system that mirrors those of Denmark and Sweden. 

Socialist countries like Venezuela once sought the same ends. They did not seek to fail at implementing socialist principles but to seemingly succeed. Who’s to say which country ours would end up mimicking if we fully embraced socialist policies? 

Refugees are not leaving socialist countries in droves because they like the government controlled industries and socialized healthcare. They are fleeing because of the exorbitant taxes that leave families in squalor, the inability to rise to higher echelons of society through hard work, and overly intrusive governments that often create tyrants rather than stewards of the nation’s needs.

We need to utilize our own Common Sense laid out by Thomas Paine nearly 244 years ago because it still rings true today.  The government doesn’t control the people. The people control the government.