Will Donald Trump, who says he “runs the world” and approved a picture of himself with a crown above the caption “Long Live the King,” soon have Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet, “Common Sense,” banned. Even though its 47 pages have rightfully been described as the most influential writing of the Revolutionary War, would Trump ban it because he feels personally attacked by Paine who deplores the absurdity and evil of monarchy as it “opens a door to the foolish, the wicked and the improper.”
It is almost as if Paine were describing not just monarchs, but the present-day oligarchs, dictators, power-hungry billionaires, disgraced scions of once admired family dynasties and anti-democracy presidents when he writes in Common Sense that “men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”
Candace Jarrett
Snohomish
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