Thomas Paine’s Common Sense Revisited
Common Sense, Abridged
Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, 1776–2026
The following offers nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense. Let the reader set aside prejudice and preposition, and let reason and feeling decide.
Some confuse society with government, though they are different in origin and purpose. Society arises from our wants; government from our wickedness. Society unites us, while government restrains our vices.
But what happens when government no longer restrains vice and instead serves one man’s will? When law is treated as suggestion and the president as sovereign, the danger is plain. In the Trump presidency, we see a man who would be king without the crown: one who speaks as though courts, statutes, and precedent need not bind him.
There is no natural reason for men to be divided into kings and subjects. Yet in our own time, a president behaves as though he stands above the law, and too many around him accept it. A republic cannot survive if power is treated as personal property.
Paine wrote that monarchy is a miserable government, sustained only by servility. That warning still stands. If a president may violate the law with impunity, punish critics, and demand personal loyalty above constitutional duty, then we do not have a republic—we have a monarchy in disguise.
The law must be king in a free nation. If citizens insist that the president obey the Constitution, elect representatives who will restrain abuse, and refuse to worship personality, then the crown can be struck down again.
America’s danger lies not in foreign armies, but in kneeling before one man. Let every person ask: am I a subject, or a citizen? If I serve the law, then Common Sense lives still.