Common Sense - 1 - No Kings
Part One
Quote
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
Notes
🔥 Government is a necessary evil in the best case scenario. In the worst case, it's an intolerable evil, made worse by the fact that "we (the people) furnish the means by which we suffer."
🔥 Security is the true (and only?) end of government. Anything else only adds complications and potential for abuse. When it comes to designing a government, the simpler the better.
🔥 Paine lays out a scenario where a small group of people come together to form a society. It's too hard to live on your own and much easier when work is distributed among more people. As it grows, a government needs to be established to lay out basic laws, because men are subject to vice and some outside force needs to reign them in. Frequent elections and switching out government members is important since then "their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves."
🔥 He goes on to poke holes in the English constitution, saying it's too complicated and the idea that the different branches of power act as a check on the others is a farce: "How came the king by a power which the people are afraid to trust, and always obliged to check?"
🔥 The English may have more checks on their king than others do, but his will is still virtually the law, only carried out with more subtlety.
🔥 Humankind are all equals in nature. So how does it happen that some become kings? In ancient times, Paine says, there were no kings, and as a consequence, there were no wars either(?). Because wars are driven by the pride of kings.
🔥 In the Bible, God was opposed to kings as well, though he eventually allowed Israel to have one. But he also warned them about what would happen and said their desire for a king was a rejection of God as their true king.
🔥 Monarchy by itself, then, is already an evil, but hereditary monarchy just adds insult to injury. It flies in the face of natural equality. "No one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others."
🔥 Hereditary monarchy perpetuates largely by fear and superstition, but now has come to be seen more as a natural right.
🔥 Not only does hereditary monarchy not make sense — if the first king is chosen by lot, then the next king should be chosen the same way — but it leads to foolish and wicked kings, rarely ever good ones. "Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent ... they are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any."
🔥 Hereditary monarchy also has extreme vulnerabilities in that a child can become a king, or a king can be a very old man in cognitive decline. In both cases they are subject to being manipulated and controlled.
🔥 "Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, then all the crowned ruffians that ever lived."
Thoughts
Interesting how Paine invokes the Bible and the Christian God as authoritative sources of history and reality, similar to previous books in the reading list, such as Locke and others. But, apparently, Paine turned against Christianity later in his life. I wonder what it was that changed his mind.
It's also curious to wonder about what source of authority, if any, would be analogous to this today. I almost doubt there is any, and it for sure wouldn't be the Bible anymore.