“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime”
-Thomas Paine

One crucial component of maintaining a free society and Democratic Republic is the sense of responsibility of the people to maintain their own civil freedom and that of the society at large. The responsibility to participate at some level and remain aware of what their government is doing in their name.

When we become ignorant of the actions of our government and subsequently come to find they have curtailed our freedoms and abused our rights, the crimes of the state become, if we fail to take action against them, crimes of the people as well. Ignorance is no excuse in a truly free society.

Where then, is the outrage?

“Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.”
-Thomas Paine, Common Sense 

History is replete with immediacies that made oppression of human rights and dignity convenient. There is little in the best of American history that lends itself much to convenience, but instead from the determined striving of the human spirit.

The only way to preserve and defend the nation is to never forfeit the Constitution and the founding principals of America to the convenience of the day.

The idea of the supremacy of human rights is the key to the survival of a nation and every age would have its excuse to forego the harder road of protecting and advancing that idea.

Making it easy does not make it right.

“When it is laid down as a maxim, that a king can do no wrong, it places him in a state of similar security with that of idiots and persons insane, and responsibility is out of the question with respect to himself.”

Demanding blind loyalty and cronyism, shunning any criticism and persecuting the critic, allowing dogma, time after time, to trump reality, and using fear to enforce irrational doctrine and open contempt for the constraints of established law – and of congress…

Be it a King in the 18^th century or a President in the 21^st, it is madness to not hold those in power to account of their abuses and utter failure of power. As it was in the 18^th century, then, so it is in the 21^st: time to dislodge from power Mad King George.

“It is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact.”
-Thomas Paine, Age of Reason

When a belief defies readily available facts, it becomes a delusion. I may believe I have lots of money in the bank, but to hold onto that belief given the fact of my bank balance would prescribe me as delusional.

When a delusion precipitates and exacerbates an ongoing human tragedy, when the delusion is defended as messianic mission whereby no one can dare question it, when a country is left in ruins, then the delusion must end.

George Bush has been hailed by some as a man of right conviction. That is as what some would like to believe. Given the facts of the past seven years, continuing such belief is in itself a delusion.

No conviction, no belief, will ever unmake that fact.  

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
-Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

On the Fourth of July it is good to remember that all we take so very much for granted was not always so. Freedom from political tyranny was very much a matter of the day-to-day world in which Thomas Paine lived and a radical idea indeed. A hard-won freedom that we must guard against losing, lest it slip quietly away from our distracted gaze.

It has been one year since I started this project, first under the auspices of World History.com with ThomasPaineBlogging.com (the site is still there, sometimes, if you’re lucky) and then here ThomasPaineBlog.org. It all started with an essay written on an idea I didn’t come up with, but one that interested me nonetheless, when considering Thomas Paine’s contribution to the American Revolution. That of Paine as the “first American blogger”, and the power of words in the fight for national independence, individual freedom, and human progress.

Thanks for being a part of the Thomas Paine Blog and the History Blog Project.

Here, once again, is that first essay:
Thomas Paine – The First American Blogger

“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.

—————————————————————