Common Sense. August 3rd, 2008

From a blogpost I made elsewhere in the netverse in 08:

Anyway. I'm reading the works of Thomas Paine at the moment and stumbled across this little bit in Common Sense:



"The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is never the less subject to change, and which every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition is, legislation without law, wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedant; the case has never exsisted before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, everyone thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases."

Now lets take this little by little and compare it to today.

"The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy."

Those words hold as true at this moment as they were back then. Except in the case of no law and no government; we have a government that through law seeks to bring back the times of yore by USING law. Complete control for those in power and no recourse for those being screwed, enslaved, stepped on, raped, overtaxed, used and abused.

"Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is never the less subject to change, and which every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition is, legislation without law, wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independance contending for dependance."

Again pretty timely, except that now we have those who have driven a further wedge between differing viewpoints, seek to keep those wedges in place and seek to keep us at each others throats. So we don't see what they are up to. Their aim, to dissolve the United States itself and enslave the people in it. We do have legislation with law, we do have a Constitution with a name. We also have people actively trying to give up their independence for dependence and force it on the rest of us as well. What we lack is wisdom and a plan to change all that. Okay that's not entirely true...many people have different plans..some are even good ones. What we lack is the will to act on them in concert, and quite possibly the wisdom to make the effort.

"The instance is without a precedent; the case has never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, everyone thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases."

The instance DOES have a precedent, the case has existed before and has come again now, and if we act or don't act, either way we can fairly well tell what will come next. The property of NO MAN is secure, because the government keeps coming up with new and more hateful ways to TAKE it from us. We sit here, as a whole and accept this situation when we keep putting the same people; or the same TYPE of people over and over again into power and office. As for the mind of the multitude...a good many of them have become random going whichever way fancy, current opinion, or the wind takes them. Giving up essential liberties and responsibilities for the 'honor' of letting Big Brother; ie the government, tell them what to do, how and when to do it.

Again people give up, or the government takes liberty from us piece by piece. Until EVERYTHING is criminalized for everyone, except for those who hold the power, or their sycophants. Everything is becoming treason, the government either fears or holds its constituents in utter contempt...beneath them.... not worthy of notice. Except as a threat to the government's own power and petty interests.

I fear the day is coming, if the rest of the country that embraces this threat; this giving up of power to have others tell you what to do and how to live; does not wake up, then America as we have known it will cease to exist. Destroyed not by outside forces...but from within, by corruption, apathy, and our own stupidity in not heeding the lessons of the past.