As Paine wrote, these are truly times that try our souls

This seems like a good moment to think about freedom, democracy, and what is worth fighting for.

In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet “Common Sense” in order to move Americans toward revolution. I have adapted just a bit of it here — to the protests that are happening now, and to Americans various responses to them. Paine valued freedom and despised oppression above all. I have substituted the current problem, the racism built into the American justice system, for Paine’s target which was Britain and the King. Paine writes:

“Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of the American judicial system and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, Come, come, we shall be friends again for all this. But examine the passions and feelings of mankind: bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honour, and trust the power that hath abused its privilege and power, committing violence wantonly and with prejudice? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with a government and a justice system whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your son been shot? Hath your father been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, mother, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.

“…Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offence, yet I am inclined to believe, that all those who espouse the doctrine of acceptance and passivity, those who abhor the Black Lives Matter movement but stand for the right to bear arms and support the right of white supremacists to protest may be included within the following descriptions:

“Interested men, who are not to be trusted, weak men who cannot see, prejudiced men who will not see, and a certain set of moderate men who think better of the United States and its justice system than it deserves; and this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this Continent than all the other three.”

Americans fought then: for freedom, for independence, for equality. They fought against oppression. They won.

We must stand up now: against racism, against the oppression of peaceful protest, against the undermining of democracy.

I’ll give Paine the last word. “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”