Saturday, June 20, 2009

Thomas Paine's Common Sense - A Must Read For Our Times

A few days ago I bought Glenn Beck's new book, "Glenn Beck's Common Sense (The Case Against [Today's] Out-Of-Control Government)". Glenn included the complete text of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense". While the text of Paine's commentary is in the back of Beck's book, I began with that to get a sense of where Mr. Beck might be going with his 'case'.

About Thomas Paine's commentary: striking & startling in the context of today's political environment and temperament in America. What's amazing is that Paine makes a lucid and provocative case for us today(!), 233 years later. That's because his argument is timeless in it's definining what the human heart yearns for and how government ignores, if not destroys, that when it becomes self-serving instead of citizen-serving.

So far, all I've read is Paine's commentary and, for me, that may even be sufficient but I still want to read what Mr. Beck makes of it. I can imagine where Mr. Beck takes his argument based on that because, upon reading many of Paine's comments, I remarked to myself "that's us TODAY"! That was, no doubt, Mr. Beck's desire. Good call sir!

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