Thomas Paine and Common Sense

The American Flag Daily ^ | January 5, 2014 | FlagBearer

[Master Zinja]

"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one..." -Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

[PGalt]

Identify the evil. Eliminate the evil. Criminals/socialists/totalitarians are evil. Lies and deceit are some of their weapons. FORCE accompanies their demands. Plunder and death are their results. Their enablers/sycophants are many.

Socialism Is Legal Plunder - Bastiat

http://www.usdebtclock.org

How to Identify Legal Plunder
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Legal Plunder Has Many Names
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.

Bastiat

DEPOPULATE criminals/socialists/totalitarians from the body politic. Some…here…

http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one..." -Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Common Sense - Thomas Paine

Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

“Liberals” (or “progressives,” or whatever euphemism they may insist on for the socialists that they actually are) systematically use “society” or “public” as euphemisms for government. My uncle, for example, honestly believed that “society” meant government; he could not undertake to define a difference between the two.

I also encountered a HS teacher who taught that in class, even back in the 1950’s. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn about the quote cited above until I had been many years a FReeper. I sure coulda used that quote on that day.