A thoroughly Enlightenment view:  the past was a reign of ignorance, superstition and tyranny.  The present and future are characterized by wisdom, reason, and freedom.

    From Common Sense:  Paine's view of monarchy - "It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry."
    Since Paine held that all human beings are born equals, "no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and thought himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them."
    Those who claim that England began through kingship (in William the Conqueror) in some honorable way are missing out on this:  "No man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one.  A French bastard landing with an amred banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original."
    Some will claim that kingship is a safeguard against war.  Paine's view:  "Were this true, it would be weighty; whereas, it is the most barefaced falsity every imposed upon mankind."
    Some have argued that England had a right to rule because it originally ruled over America.  Paine's response:  "Even brutes do not devour their young; nor savages make war upon their families" and "The first king of England, of the present line . . . was a Frenchman, and half the peers of England are descendants from the same country; wherefore by the same method of reasoning, England ought to be governed by France."

    p. 40 - view of the sources of goverment:
            a.  Superstition
            b.  Power
            c.  Common interest

    p. 53:  Why hereditary legislators are impossible.  Further, "a body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody."

Political Messianism:  Social and political revolution will remove evil and create a new and sinless, natural humanity.
    An optimistic view.  A "political theodicy" of sorts.

If government is founded on appropriate principles, the entire problem of social life would be solved.

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness.
    We are incapable of supplying all of our own needs.  Common interest is the principle forming society and holding it together.

    From Common Sense:  Society and government have different origins.  Society is founded on wants and government on wickedness.  Society promotes happiness by "uniting our affections" while government "restrains our vices.  The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.  The first is a patron, the last a punisher."  Government is, in short, at best a necessary evil (at worst, it is an intolerable evil).

    Paine's view was essentially that we are naturally sociable because of our desires; and due to economic self-interest, the more perfect a civilization is, the less government it will need because society will be peaceful as a result of fulfilled needs.
    What of the French Revolution?  How do we explain the violence there?  See p. 29, text:  comment regarding the people learning terror by being terrorized.

Less government is best.  Progress is in the direction of less government.
    Is Paine consistent on this point?  In Part II, he puts forth proposals such that public funds can be used to help the poor.  He recommended that money be used to educate the children of the poor, to support the old and sick, and a tax should be imposed on large estates to abolish them.  Isn't this government action to redistribute funds???  The editor, G. Claeys, comments:  "Instead of government being merely a negative restraining force assisting public order, it was now to foster greater social justice and equality and inhibit entrenched social privilege."  "Paine saw no need for the simple equality of traditional republicanism.  But neither was he willing to see the modern republic subverted by gross inequality."
    See text, p. 15, last paragr:  Can this comment be used also as a critique of "patterned principles" of justice?
        p. 17:  "It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive, that altho' laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations, yet that they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living.  A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non-repealing passes for consent."

    Toleration:  see. p. 55:  toleration is not the opposite of intolerance.  Toleration is the counterfeit of it.  Intolerance "assumes to itself the right of with-holding Liberty of Conscience, and the other of granting it."
    Reference to different religious denominations.  What is the result of toleration on them?
           Paine's view of the benignity of all religions until they become part of the State.

"Government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society."
    The principles of society are the laws of nature.
            Each generation has the right to choose its own form of government.  This is grounded in the notion of natural rights granted to each individual by God.  Such rights are inherited equally simply by virtue of each person's humanity.
    The point of government is to serve the self-interest of the people.
        The primary point is rights; duties are minimal - they are basically simply to guarantee to others the same rights one has for himself.
                DUTIES:  see. p. 82:  That a declaration of rights is by reciprocity a declaration of duties.

Natural rights are intellectual rights - acting as an individual for one's own comfort and happiness - that are not injurious to the rights of others.
    p. 39 - meaning of 'natural rights' - those that are executable, enforceable, by the individual.
Civil Rights are founded on natural rights - civil rights are the rights one cannot naturally secure for himself.  These are security and protection.
    p. 39 - meaning of civil rights - the power of the individual to execute them is defective.

        Society does grant rights to anyone.  "Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right."
            It follows that:
                1.  All civil rights grow out of natural rights.
                2.  Civil power becomes competent as defender of natural rights of which the individual is incapable of securing.
                3.  The power produced from the aggregate of individuals can't be used to invade natural rights.

    From Common Sense:  "Were the impulises of conscience clear, uniform, and irresisibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.  Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest beneift, is preferable to all others."
    Consider the government of Britain:  the king is monarch; the peers are aristocratical; the commons are those on whom the freedom of England depends.  The British consider the commons to be a check upon the king.  If this is the case, it means:
    1) The king is not to be trusted - "A thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy."
    2) The commons are "either wiser or more worthy of confidence than the crown."
At the same time that England is governed this way, consider this:  the commons can check the king by witholding supplies; but then the king can check the commons by rejecting their other bills.  For Paine, this is absurdity:  "it again supposes that the king is wiser than those whom it has already supposed to be wiser than him.  A mere absurdity!"

    Does Paine's claim that heredity is not an appropriate claim to rule clash with his argument that inheriting natural rights from God gives mankind the right to rule themselves???
    See p. 37:  "The fact is, that portions of antiuqity, by proving every thing, establish nothing.  It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation."
    Does Paine's position guarantee the rights of minorities?  How about the notion that majority vote will lead to the good or the right?

Natural rights are given to man by God at creation and are inviolable.

The social contract does not create government, but a civil community, a sovereign nation.  The nation has an inherent and inviolable right to abolish any form of government that it finds inconvenient.

    see p. 41.  Why government is not a contract/compact between the people and government.  Constitutions are antecedent to governments.  Therefore (p. 43), governments cannot alter themselves.  Would lead to arbitrary government.
    p. 59:  That laws exist prior to government.

    Government is nothing more than an agent of the people.  This is popular sovereignty - there is no claim to authority by government powers (the people who are weilding power) that can trump the rights of the people to remove governors from power and change the form of government.

    Hereditary government is tyranny.  It is slavery.  From American Crisis, I:  "There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themsleves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful.  It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the world, and we ought to guard equally against both."
    Paine commented that:  "Britain, as a nation, is, in my inmost belief, the greatest and most ungrateful offender against God on the face of the whole earth" (Am. Crisis, II).  Further, monarchy is "too debasing to the dignity of man."

    Representative government is the only legitimate form of government because it is founded on the natural right of each person to govern himself.  So, it follows that each person has the right to vote and engage in government affairs even if he is propertyless.

Paine argued for fair taxes, and that representative government such as that in America would preclude wars.  High taxation creates poverty and is the result of aristocracy and monarchy.
 

Text, pp. 78-80:  "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens"  = see above, comment on rights/duties.