“Civil Government does not consist in executions; but in making that provision for the instruction of youth and the support of age, as to exclude , as much as possible, profligacy from the one and despair from the other.”

In Baghdad last week a brutal dictator was hanged. For many, if not most, this was a just and deserved ending for a man whose own regard for human life sowed death and misery for millions of his own people, bringing an entire nation to its knees. If there is a case for the formalized, state-sanctioned execution of a human being, the killing of Saddam Hussein is a prime example.

And yet when a grainy video recording of his hanging emerges on the internet, complete with guards taunting him in his final moments with calls of “To hell!”, the execution, which in all cases should proceed with the tragic solemnity that any such event represents, loses some of righteous justification.

An “official” execution of another human being, even of a terrible and ruthless tyrant that arguably deserves it, should, as much as possible, remain a dignified affair – even sacred, as perverse as that may sound.

Execution is not random killing. It is not a senseless act of violence. When it is determined by the process of law that a person’s life is so abhorrent that it must end, it is, in fact, rendering what in other circumstances most consider to be the judgement of God.

When rendering such judgement, we are but a hare’s breath from becoming mere killers ourselves.

In such a moment, cries of “To Hell!” step across the line that we dance upon when putting a man to death. In human terms, the man is already condemned. He is to be no more of this world. Whatever may come of his soul once his body swings lifeless at the end of a rope is surely the realm of God.

It is for our own souls, and the soul of a nation, for which we should be concerned, when we presume to act as God and render his judgement.

“We have it within our power to begin the world over again”

An oft-quoted saying of Thomas Paine’s in this blog, a perfect expression of the quintesential faith of Thomas Paine in the continually emerging human spirit.

A New Year dawns and it is a time to consider Paine’s optimism as we strive for our better selfs, living in a better world.

“Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title.”

As Thomas Paine says, a title is but a nickname and a nickname a title.

We remember James Brown and Gerald Ford today. At first glance they seem at opposite ends of the pole – one a President of the United States and the other the Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in show business.

Titles and nicknames. Nicknames and titles. Each one’s legacy can be defined by how they lived up theirs; and Godspeed to both.

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

It is well for us to remember Thomas Paine’s words from The Age of Reason. We are but one world, and all divisions, borders, and conflicts are primarily of our own making. We can pursue peace as one people on this earth, or conflict, suffering and strife in a world divided by hatred and fear.

A fanciful and sentimental notion, perhaps, but one that we should remember as a core element in this season of giving and sharing.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Peace from ThomasPaineBlog.org.

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

While sitting down to write this post in the office of my San Francisco home, a slight tremor shook the building. Nothing much, just enough for the beams of this wooden structure to creak and my chair to wiggle. The first moments of any temblor, no matter how small, give me pause. Nine times out of ten the small shake fades away as if it was never there. But there is that one – October 1989 for me thus far – for which it does not fade away, but grows into a violent assault upon the very ground beneath my feet.

In those first moments time stretchs just a bit as I wait. Wait for what will one day surely come. And there is a reason, I suppose why I wait for it, year after year.

Because this is my home, love is shared here, life is pursued. And the small temblor just felt is a reminder.

Hold dear to what is important. Nothing worthwhile is easily obtained and once so all too easily lost.

“The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax.”

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle talks of how much of the language used in our modern political discourse threatens the very principles of liberty that our nation and Constitution is founded upon – indeed our destiny as a nation.

When language is too often used to deceive and confuse, to say what we do not entirely mean, to marginalize thought and opinion, it eventually erodes the ability to truly understand or believe anything that is said. Faith in government and our leaders – and, perhaps, in anything at all – falls victim to apathy, ignorance, and disbelief. If we can’t be sure if any particular iteration is true, then how can we believe if anything is true? If what is said is actually intended to obfuscate instead of inform, then how are we to truly understand the issues of our day and the right course of action in solving the problems we face?

The article quoted the essay Politics and the English Language by George Orwell:
“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”…
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were to long words or exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink”.

In making an analogy between constitutions and language as frameworks upon which humans endeavor to live in civilized society, Thomas Paine understood that the two are inexorably intertwined, and that the degradation of one was at the peril of the other.

“There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred”

These words, written in Thomas Paine’s The Crisis referred specifically to the British Empire, the tormenter of his place and time. Nonetheless, as with so much of Paine’s writing, his thought applies to all times and all places.

Cruelty merely begets more cruelty in a never-ending cycle of hatred and violence. Attempting to claim a moral high ground while engaging in cruelty, killing, and torture, does not make such actions moral.

Whether it is the Bible, the Koran, or the Constitution of the United States, there is no legitimate cover for unnecessary acts of cruelty.

And in all cases, to put it colloquially, mean people suck.