The Idea Of Freedom In Thomas Paine's Common Sense

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When someone mentions Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet what comes to mind? For most Americans this pamphlet symbolizes freedom, but what is freedom? Well freedom has been defined as many things such as “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint” or “absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government”, and even “the state of being physically unrestricted and able to move easily”. While all of these definitions are true, I believe Thomas Paine’s idea of freedom was “absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government” or democracy. Throughout Paine’s pamphlet he makes it clear for the “common people” who were undecided at the time, but Paine clearly states that it was in …show more content…
Paine states we should not be ruled by a monarchy because in the Bible the monarchy originated in sin, “Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them. The history of that transaction is worth attending to” (Paine). Paine continues to build his argument against the monarchy by criticizing the hereditary succession, “To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity” (Paine). Paine feels that the power to rule as a king cannot be passed down by blood relation. This idea of hierarchy was not only pervaded in the monarchy, but affected the entire British society, where people were expected to live the same lives as their parents. Paine argued that the colonies could not be ruled under an unjust government like the monarch because biblical the monarchy originated in sin and that a hereditary succession was an outrage way to rule a
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