Thomas Paine On Common Sense

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During and before the January of 1776, the American people were not very smart. It was like their lights were on, but no one was home. I mean, we still are not the smartest, though so who am I to talk about their ignorance? Because of this, a man with a little bit of common sense decided to write a pamphlet called as Common Sense. His name was Thomas Paine. Paine wrote the pamphlet in order to convince the American people that the time had come for independence from Great Britain. In turn, it did in fact encourage the American opinion toward independence (Ms. Susan’s Powerpoint in Dual Enrollment). What were some of the main points of Paine’s pamphlet though?

Many main ideas are developed throughout Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, but what was one that stood out to me? “I have …show more content…

Honestly, none of them. If I had to pick one though, I would say “Alas, we have been long led away by ancient prejudices, and made large sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted the protection of Great-Britain, without considering, that her motive was interest not attachment; that she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account, and who will always be our enemies on the same account”(Paine, 13-17). What does this mean? To me, it pretty much means that Great-Britain was using America, and the American citizens did not have enough common sense to realize it was happening. They may have thought that something shady was going on, but they did not realize the situation to its full extent. Hence my previous statement: it was like their lights were on, but no one was home. Paine goes onto say that Britain can have their issues with the different places, but America should be at peace with France and Spain. “Let Britain wave her pretensions to the continent, or the continent throw off the dependance, and we should be at peace with France and Spain were they at war with