Just because I'm on a Thomas Paine kick.

When I was in high school I read Thomas Paine's works for the first time, in my American Lit class.  At the time I was trying to convince myself that all literature was boring and depressing and that I hated it.  But even with a chip on my shoulder, I couldn't help but appreciate his stuff.

This was the passage that made me realize how much I liked his writings:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."   - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

This was written for the soldiers of General Washington's army, who were camping in the dead of winter after a bitter retreat through New Jersey.  The pamphlet was published December 19, 1776 - 6 days before Washington paddled across the Delaware, snuck up on the Trenton Garrison, peeked over the walls and went, "Surprise!" and then proceeded to take the fort, launch an offensive up New Jersey and flank the British army. 

Clearly, I'm not the only one who found these words inspiring.

We don't have war on our soil anymore, and life isn't anywhere near as hard for us as it was for the battle-weary soldiers of the Revolutionary War.  That doesn't mean life is easy right now.  I'm watching people struggle - a good friend who is too sick to go to work, a whole region of farmers losing their crops in the face of an awful drought, and my own battle with discouragement.  The war is more metaphorical now, but this is still a time that tries our souls.

But the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.

Keep fighting.  Hell is not easily conquered.

Translating Thomas Paine

Of late it has come to my attention that any perusal of the written works of eighteenth century philosophers, so lately disregarded in the daily conversation of the populace, begets a sense of confusion and misunderstanding.  So bogged down are the words, a sea of sentence structures so strangely stated and a plethora of words so anachronistic in our modern dictionary, that they can but only induce the most vexing of headaches when one but engages in contemplation of said works.  It is then my intention to engage in a work of translation that might render such writings palatable to the modern reader.

Translation:  I'm re-writing Thomas Paine's Common Sense because attempting to read it gave me a headache.

Common Sense

by Thomas Paine

Savannah Woods, trans.

I. Of the origin and design of government in general, with concise remarks on the English Constitution.

First thing we're going to do is talk about two very important elements of not being a hermit hidden in a small hut in the Rocky Mountains.

Oh, wait.  It's 1776.  The Rocky Mountains haven't been discovered yet.

*ahem*

First thing we're going to do is talk about two very important elements of not being a hermit hidden in a small hut in the Appalachian Mountains.  Those two elements are Society and Government.  Now, all these philosophers that have popped out of nowhere lately (geez, you'd think it was an Age of Enlightenment or something) have spent so much time writing about Society and Government that they're completely mushed up into each other, and there is no longer any distinction between them.

Let me point out a couple of the differences.  In short, Society looks like this :-) and Government looks like this >:-( .  That's right, government is evil.  Now, of course, it's a necessary evil, else we wouldn't have it.  Both of them promote our happiness.  It's just that Society does it in a positive, glass-half-full kind of way by encouraging us and uniting us with the things that we like, and Government does it in a negative, glass-half-empty sort of way by keeping us from doing bad stuff.  Society is a patron, Government is a punnisher.

Incidentally, spellcheck no longer recognizes the word "punnisher."  Spellcheck also does not recognize the word "spellcheck."  Curse those squiggly red lines.

So, Society vs. Government.  Society is a great thing.  It blesses us, makes us happy, gives us good things to talk about and circumstances to be in when we talk about those good things.  Government not so much.  It is the big guy who gives us spankings when we get our hand stuck in the cookie jar.  It grounds us for 25 to life.  I mean, like I said before, it's necessary.  We've gotta have it.  Can you imagine the world without it?  Rioting, chaos in the streets, nothing to stop people from bullying little people and pushing them around.  But what happens when the government starts bullying and pushing little people around?  It's the Government itself that is reducing us to the state we'd be in if it didn't exist.

Now, at this point, I'd like you to imagine lots of purple prose while I muse to myself over the state of government.  Think of a government, and then think of words like, "the badge of lost innocence," "the bowers of paradise," and imagine things like palaces of kings being built on the ruins of paradise.

Are we good on the imagery that makes my philosophy a true work of art?  Excellent.  Moving on.

Let's use an image to understand the whole reason governments exist.  It's harking back to a movement that is very popular in my day, known as Primitivism.  Primitivism is the act of imagining mankind as they were before the days of mud huts and bongo drums.  This is mankind at his birth, when he first decided he looked a little too similar to a chimpanzee and shed all over the furniture until he was shiny smooth and pink and quite naked.  This is man at his purest, his most natural.  Completely unadulterated by the corrupt trappings of modern life.

So, ancient mankind lives on their own.  Much like our Hermit in the Rocky Appalachians.  They live in this lonely existence for about thirty seconds before someone gets the grand idea, "Hey!  If you help me build my mud hut, I'll help you build yours!"  And the other guy says, "Ooh!  And, and, and!  And our wives can join forces making deer-poop stew and we can save time and combine our resources and be very happy!"  And the first guy goes, "Deer poop stew?  Dude, that's disgusting."  And the second one says, "Oh... you're right.  It tastes pretty good though."  And the wives sit back and giggle to themselves because it doesn't actually have deer poop in it, but they've convinced the second one's husband that deer poop is good for his respiratory system, and tada!  Society is born. 

They work together, because they need to.  They can't go it alone.  Besides, being a hermit is miserable anyway.

So, you have this little society.  It's got about 7 or 8 people in it.  They're living with no government, and they are happy.  Then, Uggawugga carves himself a walking stick.  Not only does he have a walking stick, but he carves the face of a duck into it.  Maggawagga likes his stick.  Maggawagga wants his stick.  Maggawagga takes his stick.  Uggawugga goes to get his stick back, and while he is there he shoots an arrow through Maggawagga's eye.

Society is not very happy about this.  They all get together and say, "Okay, we need to establish some rules.  Rule #1: don't take something somebody else made.  Rule #2: if someone takes something of yours, you can't kill them over it.  If someone breaks rule #1, they have to return it and stick their head in a pot of deer-poop stew until they pass out from lack of oxygen.  If someone breaks rule #2, the community here will kill them right back!"  Everyone agrees and tada!  Government is born.

Flash forward a few generations.  We don't have 7 or 8 people anymore.  We've got about 200.  Society is more complex and there are more problems, and a need for more rules.  Everyone has an opinion, and there's not really enough time to listen to everybody.  The meetings to discuss rules are getting longer and more boring, people are falling asleep, kids are making a mess and distracting their moms who are getting annoyed because they want to participate but they're too busy tackling small maniacs in loin cloths.  It's not working.  So, they pick someone who is smart and who believes the same things they do and say, "You go to the meeting for us, kay?" 

This group of elected people, or elected, as I like to call them, will meet and discuss stuff and work together for the good of everybody.  It's important to re-elect and make sure the elected stay in touch with the electors so that they represent them accurately.  And, it is this that makes a government strong and makes the people it governs happy.

So, to sum that all up, government was designed to benefit the people.  Get that, England?  Ben-e-fit.  Not control.  Not bully.  Now, I offer it as my opinion that the more simple something is, the less likely human beings are to muck it up, and the easier to fix it when it does get mucked up.  So, keep government small and simple.  England really thinks it's something special, and really it was... for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected.  The whole world was in one big tyrannical toilet bowl, and it was a dramatic step up.  But, it's incredibly complex.  The problem with this is that it's been degrading and it's so complicated that nobody knows how to fix it.

I mean, if you look at it, you've got a tyrannical head in the form of the king.  But wait!  You have the commons, which are there to check the power of the king!  Needing to check the king implies that he isn't trustworthy, and that the commons are smarter than him.  But then you give him the power to reject whatever measures they propose to check him.

And that makes sense... how?

Anyway, I would like you to now spend about seven minutes re-reading that last paragraph over and over.  It will save me the time to rephrase it thirty times in the next five paragraphs.

And when you're done, it's not enough to just be glad that Englishmen are not in as dire of a situation as those under the Ottoman Empire.  You need to recognize that England is in such a better circumstance because the government is a constitution of the people and not of the government.  Then think about how even though it's better than Turkey, it's not good enough.

In section II, we will discuss what's wrong with it more than we already have.  Thanks for tuning in!

finé