Corruption In Thomas Paine's Common Sense

The 1700’s was an age filled with revolutionary thinking considered groundbreaking and preposterous at the time. The entire century itself was filled to the brim with new ideas and thoughts being expressed to the public through literary pieces still widely praised today, one of the most well known of these being Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. You may ask, “How can an entire century or society already busy with the settling of the New World and the eventual Revolution, contain such pieces of literature, and the ideas that were written within them?” The answer, the ideas and thoughts that society today calls ‘revolutionary’ weren’t originally accepted, but rejected. The changes suggested by these writings, changes that would later occur, were not

This distinction inherently possesses corruption, as both the Bible and Constitution state that all are created equally, and a separation into the greater and lesser directly contradicts that equality. The separation into classes has been said to go against the right of nature, as a lion is no more worshipped by other animals than a mouse, only feared, and just like the monarchs the thinkers of the Enlightenment fought against, in their writings, the lion only holds power because of this fear. Fear is what provides monarchs the means to take advantage of the lower class, a distinction that only exists because of them. The monarchs who enforce suffering use fear as a tool, and rely upon a false segregation only persisting through the allowment of that same suffering by the ‘subjects’. Paine’s call to the American people directly asks them to break free from this suffering, to disallow their oppressors any control, and to create a society not plagued with distinction and the inherent corruption attached to it. Supporting Paine’s claims was the lack of justification in nature or scripture, both equally credible sources to the American people. Numerous examples of monarchy’s natural evils exist within Common Sense, the author goes so far as to list monarchy as a sin in the Jewish faith. Even worse in

Thomas Paine, the author of this inspiring pamphlet, revolutionized thinking in the minds of these colonists, bringing ideas such as the corruption of monarchy and the inherent evil in the class system into the discussion. However, the Enlightenment held more genius ideas than just Paine’s. Hundreds of thinkers published their thoughts on the collapsing government and society of time, but despite the this large number contributing to the philosophical movement, very few were ever accepted or praised until after America had separated from its oppressors. Layered behind the Revolutionary War was a revolution of its own, one that changed the way Americans viewed the world, a view that has stretched over the globe and still influences countless today around the