I interjected this piece because I worked with David Poff as he rewrote Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” to reflect 20th Century American prose, and also pointed out a single shortcoming in Paine’s thinking.
It was updated for a purpose, or at least one Dave and I talked about, and that is no other country has had a similar experience of their nations being built from the bottom-up. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, all spent upwards from 200-300 years being built into kings’ toy boxes, their lands being conquered by invading armies headed by tribal chiefs, most of which went by titles such as Kings, Emirs, Sultans, Ramas and Chiefs. A few now have “Presidents” as their heads of state, and many are even elected, but that title began with what went on in Philadelphia in 1776, which Thomas Paine caused to come into being.
You see, that big swath of land that runs from Massachusetts in the east, to Washington and California in the west, was occupied almost exclusively by native tribal peoples, in small bands, led by mostly warring chiefs. It was there in the east, now Massachusetts, to California in the west, that mostly small groups of Christians minorities, seeking space to be able to build their own religious communities running 100-200 at a time, came to settle.
By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, in July, 1776, those communities had barely crossed their first major roadblock to mass migration; the Appalachian Mountains. (That’s where I was born.) But even when I was teenager, church groups would still settle to farm bottom lands in groups of 20 or less. A hunter from North Carolina named Daniel Boone found a gap called Cumberland with a trail through it that could be widened for wagons, and suddenly 100’s at a time were coming through to settle the Blue Grass region of Kentucky. And Daniel Boone fell into history books and lore, much like Thomas Paine did with his 45-pg “pamphlet”, they called it.
At the time Thomas Paine was a 37-year old from England with no formal education.
Paine titled it “Common Sense”, and it was (still is) the best selling book ever printed in America (next to the Bible) for virtually every family had a copy…over a million copies (multiple printings) in a population of just under 2 million.
The text of “Common Sense” revealed even more of Paine’s understanding of “how things worked” in the American colonies in 1776, which caused most of the adult population of the Colonies to buy and read it, which then set them about notifying their delegates to write a demand notice to the English that they intended to break away from the British Empire and form their own country.
In short, the United States is unique, built from the bottom. With such strong demands from “the people” there was little else the delegates could do but appoint Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. That was followed by a series of documents; our Constitution highest among them. “The people” are still what stand as America’s foundation, while in no other nation can that be said. What is no longer found is the “base root catalyst” even in America as found from Thomas Paine’s “common sense”. The Political class tries to fake this all the time, but there is no one who can command or even tweak a truly national response as Thomas Paine did.
There you are.
But I think it (1776) can be replicated.
David Poff’s modernization sure encourages that sort of thing. Natural law dictates that every 3-4 generations, 60-70 years, there needs to be some new breath of vigor and life be pumped into our documents that cause them to relate to younger students, 16 or so, or 21 or so, if you like, and encourage them to submit old natural law emotions in a more vigorous light. A college department.
