When an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument and good order.
Thomas Paine
Category Archives: Current Events
On Respecting Your Elders
Wisdom is not the purchase of a day
Thomas Paine
On Losing Sight of the Real Issue
It often happens that the weight of an argument is lost by the wit of setting it off; or the judgment disordered by an intemperate irritation of the passions.
Thomas Paine
On Paying the Taxman
When we think or talk about taxes, we ought to recollect that we lie down in peace and sleep in safety; that we can follow our farms or stores or other occupations, in prosperous tranquillity; and that these inestimable blessings are procured to us by the taxes that we pay. In this view, our taxes are properly our insurance money; they are what we pay to be made safe, and, in strict policy, are the best money we can lay out
Thomas Paine
On Willful Ignorance
Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
Thomas Paine
On the Toll of War
It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war, that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other times appear so amiable. The continued spectacle of woe, blunts the finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, moral obligations of society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity, becomes and apology where it is truly a crime.
Thomas Paine, The Crisis
On Four Years of War in Iraq
O ye partial ministers of your own acknowledged principals. If the bearing arms be sinful, the first going to war must be more so, by all the difference between wilful attack and unavoidable defence. Wherefore, if ye really preach from conscience, and mean not to make a political hobbyhorse of your religion, convince the world thereof, by proclaiming your doctrine to our enemies, for they likewise bear ARMS.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Paine & Loathing for March – by Cobb
The Republican All-Star Game March Madness is here kids, and with it a general fascination with any and all things whose greater meaning can be divined from a competition-style bracket. With that in mind, I offer some of the latter-day All Stars from the Right; a menagerie of goons so hopelessly bent they could only …
On Concern for the Present State of the Military and Its Missions
The weaker any cord is the less will it bear to be stretched, and the worse is the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to break it.
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
On Darfur
For that which is a disgrace to human nature, throws something of a shade over all the human character, and each individual feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.
-Thomas Paine