The Wisdom of Thomas Paine

[one...two...tree 2,762]

He wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, which was to the Revolutionary War what Uncle Tom's Cabin was to the Civil War.

At the time of the American Revolution Thomas Paine noted that everything "beyond what a man's own hands produce" came to him from society, and therefore "he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."

......

Here is what Thomas Paine had to say about taxes.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence.

It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labor to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for the injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily he would not save it against old age, nor be much better for it in the interim. Make, then, society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund; for it is no reason that, because he might not make a good use of it for himself, another should take it.

My interpretation:

1. Wealth is created within society and none apart from it. Therefore those with wealth have an obligation to support society.

1. Much wealth is accumulated through the exploitation of labor. Conservatives really don't believe that you can exploit labor. After all how can you pay "too little for labor?" If the workers will work for the wage agreed and you pay them, then you are not paying too little. So Thomas Paine must be a liberal because he believed that laborers were paid too little.

1. It is violation of natural law not to give the worker his due.

1. Paine concedes that paying workers more may do little to improve their circumstance so he advocates for the government creating a fund from which disbursements can be made to provide for workers in their old age.

Don't take my word for it. Read a little Paine and you will see just how liberal this he really was.

Edited December 1, 2011 by Mister Fancypants

[slim 1,525]

Read a little more Paine and you'll find things like this -

"What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue."

"It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off."

And finally, this - "The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?"

[^_^ 5,021]

Complex minds can never be analyzed as individual soundbites.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

And finally, this - "The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?"

Sounds like he's talking about modern day RWN's.

[Captain Oates 911]

Read a little more Paine and you'll find things like this -

"What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue."

"It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off."

And finally, this - "The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?"

Sounds like Mr Paine was trying to have it both ways as George Michael used to say

Running with the fox and hunting with the hounds

There is no doubt that my career was enabled by the people who killed the Welsh who inhabited England and then cleared the forests and created the tracks and roads. However, I don't owe them a monetary debt as they did this 1,500 years before I was born and for their own purposes

It is therefore true that the world around me has been shaped by others and this has made everything possible; but they did it for themselves and not for me - and therefore my smooth passage is an unintended consequence of what they did.

For instance, the railway from Milwaukee to Seattle was not built out of beneficence - it was built for profit. The fact that it enables me to get to Seattle and then onward to civilization does not make me indebted to the railroad builder.

I am the recipient of a fortunate accident

I would like to have heard Mr Paine on the subject of universal health care which is the true marker of any society which claims to be civilized. The first approach to this was the Good Samaritan where free health care was administered out of a spirit of good-will. It is ironic that American RWNJ hyper-christians (ARWNJHC's) adopt this biblical concept willingly, while rejecting universal health care in the real world, dubbing it the mark of Marx

This differentiation in thinking is manifested where the father of a boy is willing, once the father has joined the army, to bayonet another 17 year old boy in the face if his government (politicians), tells him it's the right thing to do and god wants him to do it. The same god who talked of helping a stranger at the side of the road.

We are tens of thousand of years from leaving our animal past behind and it's going to be slow process.

There will be those who want it and those who want to hinder it because there is no advantage to them right here and now. Guess which parties the two kinds of people are attracted to.

I don't think Tommy Paine had the answers because of the human material he was working with - which isn't much different to the 2011 model

[slim 1,525]

The beauty of the health care situation in those days was there really wasn't much care to speak of!

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

P.J. O'Rourke says,

"Grover Norquist is Tom Paine crossed with Lee Atwater plus just a soupcon of Madame Defarge."

http://www.texaspolicy.com/experts.php?auth_id=24

[Captain Oates 911]

The beauty of the health care situation in those days was there really wasn't much care to speak of!

Hence most families lost half their babies to disease and that went on right up to 1900ish

I cant understand the conservatives wanting to turn the clock back to those days

No health care, no pensions, no unemployment pay, bed bugs, no air conditioning. Much misery.

Plague, witch burning, slave rape etc etc

That's why I am a progressive - I say lets keep making things better and not turn the clock back to the bad old days and they were bad, They were horrible. The conservatives have a vision of those times as a free-wheeling, exploit everything and everyone, get rich paradise, but they were far from a happy time. A conservative wants to conserve. Conserve the good and the bad - conserve all of it. I want to scrap all that stuff and have a better, (not utopian), life.

[^_^ 5,021]

i realize utopia is unachievable but shouldn't that be the goal?

[slim 1,525]

Hence most families lost half their babies to disease and that went on right up to 1900ish

I cant understand the conservatives wanting to turn the clock back to those days

No health care, no pensions, no unemployment pay, bed bugs, no air conditioning. Much misery.

Plague, witch burning, slave rape etc etc

That's why I am a progressive - I say lets keep making things better and not turn the clock back to the bad old days and they were bad, They were horrible. The conservatives have a vision of those times as a free-wheeling, exploit everything and everyone, get rich paradise, but they were far from a happy time. A conservative wants to conserve. Conserve the good and the bad - conserve all of it. I want to scrap all that stuff and have a better, (not utopian), life.

Conservatives never said they want to restrict medicine to what it was in the 1700s... only that they're not going to pay for EVERYONE to get that treatment. If you want advanced medical procedures and ALL of your kids to survive childbirth - pay for it yourself.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

i realize utopia is unachievable but shouldn't that be the goal?

No. Nirvana is a state of mind. Utopia is temporal, and therefore, a contradiction. Ideal societies are designed in the minds of scientists and philosophers, but built on the backs of lessor men.

[웃 910]

Conservatives never said they want to restrict medicine to what it was in the 1700s... only that they're not going to pay for EVERYONE to get that treatment. If you want advanced medical procedures and ALL of your kids to survive childbirth - pay for it yourself.

What part of it's MUCH cheaper to have universal coverage do you not understand?

[Captain Oates 911]

Conservatives never said they want to restrict medicine to what it was in the 1700s... only that they're not going to pay for EVERYONE to get that treatment. If you want advanced medical procedures and ALL of your kids to survive childbirth - pay for it yourself.

...and yet on the battlefield, every soldier is expected to risk his life to save his wounded comrades - people who were shot through no fault of their own

Weird how that works, but nobody wants to spend 2 cents helping their neighbor who got cancer through no fault of their own

Why is it that in matters of abortion and war, everyone has to be helped (including eggs), but once we are civilians and not babies, we can be left to rot

We argue about when life starts, but when does the 'undeserving of assistance' life start ?

18 ? 21 ?

In this culture, its all about fertilized eggs and the military, and nobody else is worth a spit

[웃 910]

Thomas Paine was a very wise man indeed. I have no doubts I would be a deranged religious person if I was born pre 20th century. There are 7 billion humans, but we are just 1 species of the ~5500 mammals on this earth (a really small and pathetic size from a numbers standpoint). And I would too have thought inside my own brain with my eyes closed thinking I was communicating with a Sky-Ceratops. A very bizarre form of communication with a Creator with 0 proofs of Her existence. Well, except a couple of very very old dusty poorly written books.

We are 1 species out of 5500 mammals!

There are actually more species of fish (31,300) than there are birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals combined (31,005).

But the entire total of vertebrates is nothing when compared to invertebrates. The species of insects (+1 million), or just spiders/scorpions alone (~102k)....Or even mollusks (~85k) really puts our category (mammals) into perspective...

Point is Thomas Paine was centuries ahead of his time. Born in 1737 and was able to see religion for what it was.

• The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.

• Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

• Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

• Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.

• All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for imposters to preach and fools to believe.

• The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.

• The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most destructive to the peace of man since man began to exist. Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses, who gave an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and then rape the daughters. One of the most horrible atrocities found in the literature of any nation. I would not dishonor my Creator's name by attaching it to this filthy book.

• Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

Edited December 1, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[Nina~ 431]

...and yet on the battlefield, every soldier is expected to risk his life to save his wounded comrades - people who were shot through no fault of their own

Weird how that works, but nobody wants to spend 2 cents helping their neighbor who got cancer through no fault of their own

Why is it that in matters of abortion and war, everyone has to be helped (including eggs), but once we are civilians and not babies, we can be left to rot

We argue about when life starts, but when does the 'undeserving of assistance' life start ?

18 ? 21 ?

In this culture, its all about fertilized eggs and the military, and nobody else is worth a spit

Reminds me of something George Carlin once said.

Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't wanna ** in the first place? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fcuked. Conservatives don't give a sh!t about you until you reach 'military age'. Then they think you are just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life...