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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