Common Sense

The DNC (and upcoming RNC) convention(s) led me to reflect on the founding of the Republic, and in my google-directed meanderings along the web in search of the Founding Documents, I encountered again Thomas Paine's Common Sense.

As relevant today as when first written, and an elegant reminder of whence democracy springs.

But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.

- from Common Sense by Thomas Paine