In this fifth part of our review of Common Sense, we will look at some of the religious underpinnings of Paine's writings. Now, to the modern, scientific American, the idea that one would actually exegete from the scriptures a coherent position on a political issue must seem strange. But, odd as it may seem, Paine(and most others of the time) utilized both secular writings and the Bible to form their ideas about whether or not accommodation or revolution was a more defensible position.
We start with the following quote, first, because it is essential to the argument being made, and second, because it draws a connection to what we see in the political landscape of America today. "The nearer any government approaches to a Republic, the less business there is for a king." And just a little later we have this from Paine, "tis the republican and not the monarchial part of the Constitution of England which Englishman glory in, viz. the liberty of choosing a House of Commons from out of their own body--and it is very easy to see that when republican virtues fail, slavery ensues." Now, it is clear from the earliest writings that our nation was founded on Republican virtues, albeit without the monarchy as described here. As we discussed in earlier posts, while Paine obviously has a monarchy in view since that is the tyrant in the room that he was forced to deal with, there is nothing to rightfully stop us from borrowing the concept of his thought on the subject and modernizing for the state of affairs today where the monarchy is replaced with a federal government that increasingly tramples on both the liberties of the individual and the power of the states. As we see things playing out today, even despite the attacks on religious freedoms, freedom of the press and the individual right to bear arms, it is perhaps the 10th Amendment to our Constitution that has taken the greatest beating, and that without much pushback. The 10th amendment, as a refresher, states, " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In the time of Paine's writing, it would have been the king that would have been the one enlarging his personal power over that of the other parts of English government. In our time, we can see that instead of a king, we have traded power consolidated in the hands of an individual for power enlarged in the Federal Government including every branch, cabinet, agency, etc...At the end of the day, whether king or federal government, the truth of Paine's words still ring true that as we move away from a Republic, the more business there is for a king/tyrannical government and as our republican virtues fail, slavery has already begun to ensue over the land.
Now, having established the close connection in theory between the king and our present state of federal tyranny, we move back in the book to look at Paine's biblical argumentation against the monarch. "Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom." From the prophet Samuel, Paine quotes, "this shall be the manner of the king that shall reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself for his chariots and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots...and he will set them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war...and he will take your fields and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and will give them to his servants...ye shall be his servants, and ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye have chosen." And do not the prophets words ring true today where instead of the king, we have erected a totalitarian beast in our own "American image" that makes Paine's concerns of the monarch seem downright trivial. Does our government not gather from the best of the people in its finances, its land, its liberties only to waste and abuse them not only in the further consolidation of its power domestically, but in an attempt to control the entire world as if this could be done. What hubris on the part of our "monarchy"! And meanwhile, the price we bear for its machinations is borne by the people, both in the children we feed to its schools, its military and its humanistic endeavors with no real cost that can be paid by this disembodied tyrant; for even the monarchies of the past at least had their own flesh in the game. Oh, would Paine see what matter of trouble we have set upon ourselves today I dare say that he would run willing to the arms of a comparatively benevolent monarch. But we cannot forget, as the prophet Samuel warned us, cry all you want, but don't forget that you have chosen the tyrant in your midst.
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