Guest Blogger: Alladin Budimlic

In Thomas Paine’s Common Sense the main idea of the entire writing is to stand up against injustice. This idea is also used in the Declaration of Independence and the main reason of the American Revolution. Paine writes that “Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” The thing that came out to me the most was the capitalization of the words tax, bind, and all cases whatsoever. This use of capitalizing these words gives them meaning. This meaning is anger and Paine uses pathos to get his point across. Throughout the section of reading he lists abuses that Britain has done to the colonialists. Though the Declaration and Common Sense both list grievances Thomas Jefferson uses the king as his main point by using the anaphora of He has, but Paine tends to use she or Britain and not single out the king. He last topic in Common Sense that got my attention was the ending where Paine writes “if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?” This quote reminds me of the Socratic seminar that we did as a class a few weeks ago that discussed the question, is violence justifiable? During these seminars I noticed that many people believed that only in self defense can person use violence. In Common Sense Paine agrees with this idea because he states that if the war was an offensive war where we had no just cause to fight it then he sees it as murder, but if the war was to regain the god given rights that everyman should have then he supported it.