Society Vs Government

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine lists out the difference between society and government. These are two very, very different things, and yet instead of our society dictating our government, we have switched to our government dictating our society.

Paine said "SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."

He also said, "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. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others."

What Paine is really saying here is that if we behaved the way we should, the best we could be as a society, that we would not need government at all. This is the antithesis of what our government keeps telling us. Our government tells us, you don't need to take care of your neighbor, we'll do that for you. You don't need to worry about your mistakes, we'll take care of those for you. You don't need concern yourself with others, we'll take care of them for you. In essence, they are encouraging us to be our worst so that we need them more. If we stopped allowing government to usurp our best behaviors as a society, we would be much better off. This is not something government wants. By taking over the role of society, they ensure their own existence, and that's all they want to do. Government's first concern is the continuation of it's own power.

What would it be like to have a leader who inspired us to be better as individuals so we needed government less? What would it be like to have a leader who didn't focus us on our worst qualities but inspired us to show only our best? What would it be like to have a leader who didn't apologize for our past but embraced the accountability we used to have as a society? Does a leader like that even exist?

We are a great country and a great people. We pull together in tragedies and are among the most generous people in the world. We have incredible qualities that have become dormant and now only show in a crisis. Why is this? Because government has taken the need for our everyday expression of these qualities from us to increase their own power. Take it back from them. We long to be inspired. So where is the person to do it? I pray he or she appears soon.

Let's Focus On The Past - About 230 Years In The Past

There has been a lot of talk about letting go of the past and focusing on the future. I disagree with this. We need to look back. All the way back to our origins. We have already moved too far away from who and what we were supposed to be, and when leaders tell us not to focus on the past, they're telling us they don't want us to pay attention to how much further from our original purpose we're moving.

Obama doesn't want us to look back because he doesn't want us to really know these "principles and values on which we were founded" that he keeps quoting. This is due to the fact that he is violating almost every one of our true principles. Thomas Jefferson said to educate the people on their past, so that's what I am going to do today.

We talk a lot about common sense. That it's just common sense that a 50% tax rate is absurd. It's just common sense that government telling us what to do is bad. Well let's look at Common Sense, the pamphlet written by Thomas Paine and distributed in January of 1776. The Common Sense that rallied the colonists to revolution. The Common Sense that was the precursor to our Declaration of Independence. If' you've never read Common Sense, I highly recommend it.

Thomas Paine's pamphlet was incredibly powerful, and a past we should definitely focus on. All I will post today is part of the introduction, but that alone is a strong condemnation on where the colonies were at the time, and where the new nation has gone again.

"PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; 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 defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the means of calling the right of it in question, (and in matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry,) and as the king of England hath undertaken in his own right, to support the parliament in what he calls theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of either."

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right. How very true that statement is. We have accepted the growth and increasing power of our government as not being wrong, and as a result, current leadership is pushing the appearance that it is right. It is not right.

We have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of our government and to equally reject the usurpations of either. I don't think there's any question that our leaders have become pretentious, and that they are usurping our rights. But are we exercising our privilege of inquiry? Are we holding our leaders accountable for the usurpations of our liberty and independence? Or are we accepting the superficial appearance of it's rightness. That's a question that only you yourself can answer.

Look back. Focus on our nation's past. Know where we started and he principles on which we were built. Educate yourself and others. And most importantly, take a long hard look at where we are and compare that to where we were supposed to be.