Society is a Blessing, Government an Evil

Tenth Amendment Center ^ | 01-10-2011 | Thomas Paine

[RepublicnotaDemocracy]

On January 10th, 1776 Thomas Paine published “the most popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era”, Common Sense. In this short pamphlet Paine outlined what would become the cornerstone and supreme argument for individual rights and liberties.

Of the Origin and Design of Government by Thomas Paine, Excerpted from Common Sense

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.

In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of liberty....

[AnalogReigns]

Oh, to have such truly common-sense statesmen today. Paine may have been a deist, but one truly blessed of God.