Thomas Paine and democracy

For school I am reading Common Sense and The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. I think the man needs to take a deep breath and stop preaching hell and damnation to anyone who does not support republican democracy. If he was on an email group today, he would definitely be charged with inflammatory speech. The way he talks, you would think that King George was out to destroy the US (quite the contrary) and that all Englishmen who dared want to stay a part of that empire were low-life scums. He's a demagogue and good at it, and he can write well, so he would be very dangerous if he didn't keep his topic on freedom. His principles of democracy are quite sound, if expressed in arrogant language*, and reminded me of an experience in the Youth Senate.

The bill under discussion was relating to people being able to have direct influence in the government (i.e. not through politicians), and one of the debaters, referring to a radical that he didn't approve of, said that if you gave some of the government's power to the people, the government was then afraid of the people, and that wasn't good. Good heavens, did he realize what he was saying? He was promoting aristocracy. The way that our government works now is such that politicians have become the elite force that our Founding Fathers wanted to prevent. Congressmen and Representatives may not have life terms, but it's almost as hard to join their ranks as to join Parliament in England.

In a country that claims to be a republican democracy, the people should have some way to directly input their views on politics. In fact, the government should be afraid of the people. When a dictator is in power, who are people afraid of? The dictator. When a king is in power and of the opposite political party, who are you afraid of most? The king of course. We are afraid of people in power. Therefore, in a democracy legislators should be afraid of the people. They should not be comfortable in their little existence, thinking that they can only be stopped come election time. They should feel the eyes of the people on them at all time, and be afraid of stepping out of line. This has nothing to do with political parties; it has everything to do with democracy. The government is there to do the will of the people, and who knows the will of the people better than the people themselves? I believe that it is necessary for the people to have some form of direct input into their government, for a healthier, more democratic society.


* = "The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth." Than of America's independence? Patriotism is one thing, but this is a little overdone.