His Words in Today's Context
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
-Thomas Paine
Honesty requires a willingness to communicate things that others may not wish to hear, nor that we relish saying.
From the true patriot rejecting a failed leader’s policies to pointing out an annoying trait or destructive behavior in someone close to us, sometimes what is required is “tough love” to show that we are forthright and truly care.
“All power exercised over a Nation must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
The United States is built upon a framework of ideals defined by law. The foundation of that law is the Constitution of the United States. All political power therefore must derive at its core from the Constitution.
To claim power not clearly defined in the Constitution or not previously declared as a constitutional power by the judiciary branch – in other words to assume power, even if claiming that it is constitutional when not clearly delegated as such – compromises the checks and balances of our democracy and degrades the Constitution, and is therefore anti-American by its very definition.
There can be no excuse for willful and flagrant disregard for the rule of law or an ongoing and persistent grasp for political power when it is not delegated or defined by the Constitution.
Not even – and especially – if you’re the president (or vice-president) of the United States.
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“How nearly is human cunning allied to folly! The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning, know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning, he blunders and betrays.”
-Thomas Paine
It is the cunning that will, without a second thought, betray a human trust, a common decency, the truth. A forthright man might at times be considered a knave or a fool, falling prey to the deceitful and cunning.
But as each one draws their last breath, the forthright will have nothing to hide from his God, and go to his rest knowing that if there is to be a heaven, he will find it.
The cunning will struggle for one more breath, one more chance to deceive what, to his horror, he knows finally, in his heart, cannot be deceived.
As the darkness descends, he will wish for the life of the forthright. But it is too late. The predator at last becomes the prey as eternal death overtakes the deceiver.
“When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity.”
-Thomas Paine
Every age has their class of men that presume wisdom and authority for which they do not possess and for which they are not worthy.
Even, unfortunately, those in the highest reaches of human society.
“We sometimes experience sensations to which language is not equal. The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of thinking, we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their magnitude, find no way out — and, in the struggle of expression, every finger tries to be a tongue. The machinery of the body seems too little for the mind, and we look about for helps to show our thoughts by.”
-Thomas Paine
It is a Beethoven symphony or a Van Gogh painting; a rain-soaked forest or the star-choked heavens hurtling toward forever on a clear summer night.
People will write tomes on the symphonies of Beethoven and the tortured artistry of Van Gogh; they will wax poetic of the wonders of nature and the connectedness it engenders.
But words are not the music, the painting, nor the poetry of nature. There is beauty in words, but it is not beauty itself; nor is music, painting, or even nature. It is the window through which we might find a glimpse.
The true expression of beauty is always just a little beyond our firm grasp, but in our speechless awe we feel the chill up the spine, the hair standing on end, feeling the power of it; expressed simply by being.
“There are cases in which silence is a loud language.”
-Thomas Paine
It is a world of constant chatter, most of it signifying nothing.
The trick then, is to turn off all the devices and contrivances of the modern world and listen to the sound of silence. The spaces in our existence that are buried beneath the ruble of email, text messages, cell phones, and television. The real part.
It may be difficult at first, for we’re so used to noise being pushed at us from all directions. But silence leads to things we’d never know and places we’d never discover in the cacophony of mindless babble.
Turn off your computer and go sit for a spell…
“There is something in a war carried on by invasion which makes it differ in circumstances from any other mode of war, because he who conducts it cannot tell whether the ground he gains, be for him, or against him, when he first makes it.”
-Thomas Paine, The Crisis
News Item: “US Forces Face Bloody Start to June in Iraq”
Whatever idea there was of what victory would look like when the United States military rolled across the desert toward Baghdad in the spring of 2003, it bears little resemblance to what it could ever look like today – if any sort of “victory” is even a possibility.
The question becomes what ground we have gained as a nation in seizing Iraq. We now hold onto a tragedy that continues to unfold with each passing day.
“I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.”
–Thomas Paine
Popularity thus becomes important only after the crave of fashion and expediance has faded. Only then will the true worth of an idea reveal itself.
Otherwise, there can be no progress.
“The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.”
-Thomas Paine
We’re a social animal, more or less. It is through collective effort the we survive and thrive; a selection of evolution that helped us to spread across the planet and populate it with six-and-a-half billion people.
Almost every one of those billions of people depend on at least one other to survive. No man is an island, and when he pulls the cloak of solitude and sufficiency around him, a chill wind still blows.
Through the cooperation and assistance of others, we can build a fire against the cold night and survive another day.
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry”
Alberto Gonzales doesn’t recall doing much of anything; Monica Goodling, a lawyer, confesses to “crossing the line” but can’t say whether she broke any laws; five million emails turn up “missing”…
It is a story that continues to linger only because the gross error that is the Justice Department under the leadership of Alberto Gonzales continues to conceal the truth.
Whether Gonzales and his team are simply stunningly incompetent, motivated only by loyalty to political dogma, or simply don’t care, it makes a mockery of the Department of Justice.
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