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Showing posts with label Thomas Paine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Paine. Show all posts

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Common Sense v. Uncommon Sense



Common sense is an abstract term that means different things to different people. Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet "Common Sense' that built the arguments for the American revolution. Thomas Paine (February 9, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founders of the United States. He had a grammar school education an era in which education was not compulsory. Paine is one of those poeple who had some uncommon sense.

Paine stated that the distinction between kings and subjects was a false one. he also believed:
  • It was absurd for an island to rule a continent.
  • America was not a "British nation"; it was composed of influences and peoples from all of Europe.
  • Even if Britain were the "mother country" of America, that made her actions all the more horrendous, for no mother would harm her children so brutally.
  • Being a part of Britain would drag America into unnecessary European wars, and keep it from the international commerce at which America excelled.
  • The distance between the two nations made governing the colonies from England unwieldy. If some wrong were to be petitioned to Parliament, it would take a year before the colonies received a response.
  • The New World was discovered shortly before the Reformation. The Puritans believed that God wanted to give them a safe haven from the persecution of British rule.
  • Britain ruled the colonies for its own benefit, and did not consider the best interests of the colonists in governing them.
The Revolutionary Era was a time when monarchs still believed in the divine right of kings and that Kings had been chosen by God to lead their countries. Imagine a colonist stating that there was no difference between a king and his subject in the 1700s!

Where, of course, has been the common sense of the GOP in the last eight years?  It preferred military force to diplomacy and blundered into Iraq. There are 4,345 US dead as of September 20, 2009. As of April 6, 2009 there were 31,102 wounded in action. Iraqi causlaties vary from 151,000 to more than a million. Five million children in Iraq are orphans which represents half of Iraq's children.. The cost of this war will easily exceed $1 trillion dollars.

Where was the vaulted GOP common sense in Hurricane Katrina? Louisiana is still reeling from that hurricane. Because the GOP prefers to invest the nations blood and treasure into defense, it has neglected the public infrastructure. The flooding of New Orleans was an accident waiting to happen.

And where on God's Green Earth is the GOP common sense in governing the US? The GOP lead the US into a Depression in the 1920s and almost repeated the feat during the Bush administration. Over the years Republicans ignored the lessons of the Great Depression and even tried to deregulate banking of all things.

Does America really want more leaders like Gerge W. Bush and Sarah Palin who are under-educated ideologues? George W. Bush was an underachiever in college and got into Harvard because of special grandfather rule that was instituted the year he applied to school. John McCain finished disgracefully at the bottom one per cent of his class at Annmapolis. Sarah Palin attended five different colleges in six years and left the the University of Hawaii to attend a school in Idaho because she was uncomfortable around Asians.

Rightardia' view is that the US needs its best and brightest running the country. We do think 'business common sense' is a prerequisite for an effective government leader or  administrator. We are opposed to Forest Gump types running the government. We are elated that a young intellectual like Obama is president and running the country. America has high expectations for Obama. We think many of them will be realised with a little patience.

source: Wikipedia

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Saturday, October 3, 2009

Republicans have become sunshine patriots


Thomas Paine:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. 

Paines essay, The Crises, is relevant after more than 200 years.  The US came dangerously close to the precipice and could have easily entered another depression. Employment is still very unstable. 

This  is a time in which the two political parties should be working together. Yet the GOP has become a disloyal opposition. This is peculiar because the GOP created most of the problems that  nation is now facing. Instead of being part of the solution to make America stronger, the GOP is still the problem. 

The GOP is inhabited by fair weather patriots. When their conservative is president, everyone is expected to salute the flag, march off to war and pray to Jesus.

When their man isn't in office, it is time for Tea Baggers, Birthers and Astroturfers to head to the streets to complain about a new health care program that will provide basic health services to all Americans and to suggest our great president was foreign born. 

These people were never patriots. They are  partisans who cannot find a middle ground with Democrats. Many of their protest signs have misspellings and grammar errors indicating many of them are undereducated. A lot of these people work in the health care industry.

An Olympics in the US would be good for the country, but the shadenfreude of the Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and Lou Dobbs was shocking when the US was eliminated in the first round. The US still owes the IOC money from the Salt Lake City Olympics and it is unlikely  the IOC has forgotten all of the bribery from conservative businessmen Ogden-born lawyer Tom Welch and car salesman Dave Johnson that landed the Olympics in Utah.

We applaud the efforts of men like John McCain and Colin Powell to bring the GOP back to the center. The extreme politics of the GOP aren't patriotic and it is not helping the US to become strong again. It just indicates that many Republicans are mean-spirited and small minded. This right wing pettiness needs to to stop and America's huge problems need to be resolved in a bipartisan manner.


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source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympic_bid_scandal

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Saturday, September 5, 2009

What Glen Beck really needs

This is curious name for a book written by Glen Beck. Beck recently claimed Obama doesn't like white people although the mother and grandparents who raised Obama were white. Thomas Paine must be turning over in his grave.

Perhaps what Beck really needs is some uncommon sense.

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