Can Thomas Paine's Common Sense Help Shape Future Politics?

”Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; 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. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
--Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Thomas Paine

The candidates are basically the same.
My vote won’t change the way society is run.
It’s all lies and nonsense anyway, so what’s the point?

Usually, the consensus is that politicians gloss over important issues, play word-games to avoid offending anyone and generally never solve anything. The consensus is that common sense never really presents itself anymore. So what would Thomas Paine, the man who literally wrote the book on common sense have to say about today’s politics? What advice would he give to forge the irrefutable truths of foreign and domestic policy?

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense stands a hallmark classic in the political canon because of the concise brevity in its conclusions, often taken to be self-evident. Paine wrote a number of arguments serving to illustrate why America should become an independent nation and, in so doing, forge an ideal society. So how much of his advice still stands today? Much of it is contextual to the time and place within the intellectual climate of his day, but Paine meant for it to be taken more timelessly during his passages of resisting tyranny and founding a nation on representational democracy.

Dissecting Common Sense can lead to hints about what Paine might suggest for current governments. All in all, I think it would be safe to say that some of the current American republic would amaze and inspire Paine – but some of it may equally shock and disgust him.

1. Politicians must carry the same struggles of those represented.
“…as the colony increases, the public concerns will increase likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasional as at first, when their number as small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present.”

Seems like common sense, right? Paine means to say that politicians must have experienced poverty to effectively fight it, or else they truly have no vested interest in solving the problem. They may take steps to lessen its degree, but unless they too are beleaguered by the same issue, solving it will never be their top priority.

”…and that elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often; because as the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflexion of not making a rod for themselves.”

The catch is that someone can never truly have experienced all the ills within society to properly combat them, or if they have – then they haven’t had time to develop critical faculties usually deemed necessary for leadership. Regardless, this notion is nearly altogether absent from modern politics.

2. Simple, transparent governments are preferable to complex ones.
“Absolute governments (tho’ the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, that they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs, know likewise the remedy, and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures. But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies, some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.”

If the first point is mostly absent from modern politics, this one is moot. Governments now, perhaps by necessity, are more complex than most people can imagine. Miles of bureaucratic red tape surrounds even the most mundane aspects of government, with the average citizen having no idea where their money goes or how it’s spent. It seems like common sense that the government should be simple, and people should now how it’s run -- including the knowledge of where their money goes.

3. Humanity should resist tyranny in all its forms.

It’s here that Paine touches on a commonality of modern politics. With the exception of a few rogue nations, most tyrants are no longer tolerated. Some tyrants have risen to defend their power in a handful of nations around the globe, while a few are supported by the American and British governments for the sake of money – but all in all, with the UN, international armies and Team America, hauling down despots who won’t play ball has become a mainstay of 21st century Earth.

“The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ‘Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent – of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. ‘Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.”

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”O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! 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.”

I’m sure you’ll all agree with me: it stands to reason that reason should stand up to tyranny.

4. Government spending on weapons is great, but not when it generates a massive debt.
“The debt we may contract doth deserve our regard if the work be but accomplished. No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance. Britain is oppressed with a debt of upwards of one hundred and forty millions sterling, for which she pays upward of four millions interest. And as a compensation for her debt, she has a large navy; America is without a debt, and without a navy; yet for the twentieth part of the English national debt, could have a navy as large again. The navy of England is not worth, at this time, more than three millions and a half sterling.”

This one is more ironic because of America’s persistence with generating a mind-bending deficit with military weapons. Weapons oriented toward nearly helpless foes and over a hundred military bases abroad that mostly serve to antagonize and provoke than to maintain peace. Paine’s advice to any current government would surely be to develop a core guard but not the arms of invasion; rather to keep the riches and spend the surpluses of investment should a later cause necessitate the army.