For most of my life, I have known the name Thomas Paine. But also for most of my life, I have known little about him and his importance. This month, however, seemed like a good time to learn/think a little more about Paine, who was born 285 years ago, and about his emphasis on common sense.
Who Was Thomas Paine?
Paine was born in England in 1737 on January 29,
which was February 9 according to the “new style” calendar used after 1752.
After losing his wife and baby at childbirth
in 1760, and then after various failures and the loss of his job in 1774, he
moved to Philadelphia and got a job working as an editorial assistant for the Pennsylvania
Magazine.
After the first battles of the Revolutionary
War in 1775, Paine argued that the colonists should not simply revolt against
taxation but demand independence from Great Britain entirely. He expanded that
idea in a 50-page pamphlet called “Common Sense,” printed in January 1776.
Why Is Thomas Paine Memorable?
Within a few months after its publication,
“Common Sense” sold more than 500,000 copies, and according to Biography.com (here), more than any
other publication, it “paved the way for the Declaration of Independence, which
was unanimously ratified on July 4, 1776.”
Then beginning in December of that year, a
most uncertain time regarding the outcome of the revolution, Paine began publishing
a series of pamphlets under the title The American Crisis, and he signed
them with his pseudonym, “Common Sense.”
The first of those thirteen pamphlets famously
begins, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” At the beginning of
that harsh winter of 1776, a great many soldiers were ready to quit—until
ordered by General Washington to read Paine’s Crisis (which can be read
in full at this
link).
The morale of the American colonists was
bolstered and their resolve fortified by Paine’s words, “Tyranny, like hell,
is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder
the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
In 1787, Paine returned to England, and two
years after the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, he wrote The
Rights of Man. That tract moved beyond supporting that revolution to
discussing the basic reasons for the widespread discontent in Europe and railing
against an aristocratic society.
Paine’s last major book was The Age of
Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, the first
part of which was written in 1794 after he had been imprisoned for nearly a
year in France.
Paine returned to the United States in 1802 or
’03, but by then his influential revolutionary work had mostly been forgotten. He
died in 1809, and only six mourners were present at his funeral.
Because of his last book, though, he became
known in the mid-nineteenth century as a leader of “freethinkers.” And then in the early
twentieth century, Paine's reputation was restored and he again was (accurately)
viewed as a vital figure in the American Revolution.
What Is Common Sense?
“Common sense” can be called that only for
those who see the world through the same, or quite similar, “conceptual lenses.”
What Paine wrote about common sense for those
who wanted to be free from the “tyranny” of England was, truly, common sense
for them. But it certainly was not common sense for King George and all the Redcoats
who fought for him.
And so it is regarding many burning issues
today.
You would think it is only common sense that
everyone would get covid-19 vaccinations and only common sense for the
government to mandate vaccines and masks in order to control the spread of covid-19.
But, alas, a sizeable portion of society wears
different conceptual lenses: they see the greatest good as personal “freedom”
and oppose “tyrannical” governments they see as seeking to usurp that freedom. Even
a “Christian” organization is used to support the “Freedom Convoy” in Canada (see
here).
And you would think it is only common sense
that we humans would acknowledge the seriousness of global warming and take even
drastic measures to mitigate the coming environmental crisis. But, again, alas!
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Local Thinking Friend Bruce Morgan was the first this morning to send comments:
ReplyDelete"I guess I fall into the freethinker category, since I embrace Payne’s Common Sense philosophy. Thanks for your article."
Thanks for reading and responding, Bruce. But I don't think one has to be a "freethinker" in order to embrace Paine's common sense philosophy. In fact, during those first years in Philadelphia when he wrote "Common Sense" and "The American Crisis," He made many references to God in a fairly "orthodox" manner. It was only after his return to England and then during and after the French Revolution that he turned more toward deism--and to being a freethinker--and away from the more "orthodox" belief in God.
DeleteTF Bruce wrote again clarifying his first comments:
Delete"I intended to use the term freethinker in a looser, non-theological sense, to express openness to non-traditional ideas. I probably didn’t fully understand the context for the term freethinker as a reference to deists."
Thanks for writing again and clarifying your first comments, Bruce. I assumed you did not use "freethinker" in the way it was often used in the late 19th century--and later.
DeleteI checked out a library book by Leigh Eric Schmidt, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, published in 2016 under the title "Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation." He writes, "The freethought era that American infidels celebrated actually began . . . with Tom Paine," who "was a singular founding father for American freethinkers and his 'Age of Reason' . . . their originating manifesto" (p.85).
Here are comments from another local Thinking Friend, and good personal friend, Debra Sapp-Yarwood:
ReplyDelete"Regarding your penultimate paragraph on personal 'freedom,' which you rightly put in quotes: This NYT essay from Sunday offers some context and history around the exploitation of the word.
"Regarding our shared dismay around global warming, today's top NYT article touts this year as "the tipping point" for the electric vehicle. May it be so!
"I also hope it makes you feel good that your mind and the New York Times seem to be in sync. That's heady company!"
Debra, thanks for linking to the opinion article "The Exploitation of ‘Freedom’ in America" by Elisabeth Anker, professor of American studies at George Washington University and the author of “Ugly Freedoms.”
Delete(https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/opinion/ugly-freedom-discrimination-racism-sexism.html)
I just now read that article, and I agree with her conclusion: "The ugly freedoms in American politics today increasingly justify minority rule, prejudice and anti-democratic governance. If we don’t push back against their growing popularity, we will have ceded what freedom means to those who support monopolistic rule and furthered the country’s downward slide toward authoritarianism. Creating and supporting democratic alternatives to ugly freedom, both in legislatures and on the streets, are urgent tasks for all who value equality, community health and the shared power to construct a free society that truly values all its members."
That sounds like common sense to me.
I also hadn't seen today's NYTimes article on electric cars until you linked to it
(https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/business/energy-environment/electric-cars-vehicles.html). While that is encouraging, I am afraid that it is going to be far too little far too late.
But on the subject of electric cars, I read this morning that Daihatsu, a major producer of small cars in Japan, set a goal in December of ensuring that all new cars it sells domestically will be electrified by 2030. I thought, Wow, that is less than eight years from now.
Local Thinking Friend Sue Wright sent these comments about common sense, as those words are commonly used:
ReplyDelete"Common sense has been a frequent term esteemed around our house if not always a behavior put to use. Some of us in the family think it’s something you have to be born with. Good luck in life if you aren’t.
"But to the reason we so often describe it as a blessing if a person has it--it’s because my husband’s boss (who in time became his partner) taught my husband Dick to look for a combination of two sets of personality traits whenever he was hiring new people for the business. Those two: Fire and enthusiasm and common sense!
"Go against common sense and there are often dire consequences to be suffered. Unfortunately for the last two years, those consequences have been thousands of unnecessary pandemic deaths. Do I think none of the people who died had common sense? No. I just think a lot of them let skewed thinking get in the way of what they knew by instinct--their best instinct--would be the wisest choice. Their wacky senses trumped their common sense. So sad."
Thanks for your comments, Sue.
DeleteYes, as you wrote in your last paragraph, I'm afraid that political propaganda, sadly, often skews people's common sense.
For some reason, all my Thinking Friends who I have heard from so far this morning are local, and here are interesting questions posed by Anton Jacobs:
ReplyDelete"I asked somebody recently, who is better off, the USA who had a 'revolution' or Canada who didn’t? So which country had more common sense?"
Anton, I have thought from time to time about the difference between Canada and the U.S. in their relationship with England, although I hadn't thought about it before in terms of common sense. As one who has had high regard for Canada for a long time, I have sometimes thought that the British colonialists in what became the U.S. probably should have been more like the Canadians. If they (in what became the U.S.) had been more patient, probably they could have solved their disagreements with England without warfare. (It is hard for us pacifists to ever see justification for war.) As a good Canadian friend recently reminded me, though, there are also pockets of irrationality (lack of common sense?) in Canada today--such as the Freedom Convoy.
DeleteHere are brief comments from outside the Kansas City area. They are from Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky:
ReplyDelete"My father in his sober moments would often invoke Thomas Paine, but I think is was Paine’s skepticism that he liked more than “Common Sense.” We could certainly use the latter today as extremism and ignorance grow in America."
Local Thinking Friend Vern Barnet emailed me the following comment--and gave me permission to share it here:
ReplyDelete"Reading 'Age of Reason' as a biblical literalist and narrow fundamentalist as a high school junior changed, transformed, disrupted my life forever."
Here was my reply to Vern:
Delete"Wow! I was also pretty much a biblical literalist and narrow fundamentalist as a high school junior--but I didn't read 'Age of Reason' then. I wonder if or how my life would have been changed had I read it then."
Unfortunately, "common sense" is often used as a substitute for knowledge, and to denigrate higher education. To those who misuse the term in that way, I say "What is needed is uncommon sense."
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Charles. I hear what you are saying, but perhaps you would agree that in most situations common sense as well as (higher) education are both needed. Certainly, neither does away with the need for the other.
DeleteWe should not consider the American Revolution without confronting the desire of southern states to continue slavery and of northern states to continue smuggling. England had just banned domestic slavery in 1772, and that really rocked the south. Read more here: https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/slave-nation/
ReplyDeleteThomas Paine was certainly an influential thinker, and well worth reviewing. Still, especially in a time when we are reconsidering black and indigenous history, there remains an ominous cloud over the American Revolution.
Tuesday afternoon, I received these comments from Thinking Friend Truett Baker in Arizona:
ReplyDelete"The timing of your blog is perfect. Not since Thomas Paine has our country needed 'common sense' more. The malignant Trump 'cancer' seems to be spreading rather than diminishing. I never imagined that I would live to see the ugly and evil temperament that has embraced our country as evil is called good, and good is called evil. God help us!"