Common Sense still relevant and uncommon

An interesting article, Happy Birthday, Common Sense by Chris Weigant marking the publication of Thomas Paine's classic. Common Sense was one of history's all-time publishing phenomenon. Even though, under the laws of the land at that time, it was treasonous, Common Sense sold in the hundreds of thousands, initially in the American Colonies and then internationally. As Weigant notes, "To proportionally match this today, a book would have to sell something like 60 million copies in this country alone - an almost impossible feat."

Weignat ascribes the success of Common Sense to the preparedness of the Americans for its message and to the directness of Paine's writing. It is striking to read such common sense and clarity in a document that is nearly a quarter of a millineum old:

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.

In some cases his words, while directed to the circumstances of his time, reflect issues with which we wrestle today.

To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an Ass for a Lion.

We don't often these days think of the historical repudiation of divine right of monarchy and inheritance taxes at the same time and yet, as Paine's observations indicate, there is an underlying linkage.

In the following passage there is a profound observation that rings down the ages.

If there is any true cause of fear respecting independance, it is because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way out -- Wherefore, as an opening into that business, I offer the following hints; at the same time modestly affirming, that I have no other opinion of them myself, than that they may be the means of giving rise to something better. Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.

Paine is, in passing, describing one of the most consequential divides and discomforts that exist today and which animates the heated political discussions that swirl about. There are those that desire and seek the power to direct every sequential action and believe that they can have and need the detailed plan that takes them from A to Z ("If there is any true cause of fear respecting independance, it is because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way out.") Such individuals are driven by both fear of incipient chaos which has to be mastered, and by hubris as reflected in the belief that any human effort to master chaotic, complex, loosely coupled non-linear systems can ever yield the outcomes anticipated and desired.

Then there are those that have a conviction in a more abstract set of principles, freedom, specialization, democracy, pluralism, individualism, etc. which these people believe will, by their own nature and interaction, lead to a desired outcome but by pathways both unpredictable and unanticipatable ("Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.")

Paine writes in the context of Monarchs and rebellious Americans but his underlying issue is still with us - those that would centralize power and those that seek to diffuse it.

It behooves us to go back and recapture some of that wisdom and insight from yesteryear even though our neophiliac culture tends to discount the value of ideas by their age.

UPDATE: Came across this contemporaneous quotation from Adam Smith that seemed relevant vis-a-vis the first type of person, the centralizers of power.

The man of system . . . is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.