Purpose

In light of overarching changes in our country over the last decade and the more immediate concerning shift in our countries leadership and proposed future for the country I love, I found myself at a loss for how I feel and what I can do. I have always been a fan of common sense, both in the practice and in the pamphlet by Thomas Paine circulated in our founding days. I will firstly admit that while I was taught about it in school and read about it and excerpts from it, I had never actually read it. I decided to download it today, read it, and attempt to apply its philosophies to our present plight.

Right off the bat I realized why most of us didn’t read the actual pamphlet, not an easy read. Like many of our historic documents from the time, the prose was rather flowery and complicated. Nevertheless, I did my best to read and comprehend it and reflect on how it could apply to our current state of affairs. The pamphlet has three main parts to it. The first talks about government in general, our need for it, the benefits and the inherit evils that come along with it. The second talks about monarchs and succession. While this is not directly applicable to our country and our government, I found a lot of insights from it that do apply to us. The third, was about the present state of affairs in America (at the time). So in plain terms it is about why we don’t just do away with government entirely, why the present government is not working for us, and what we should do instead.

The purpose of this blog is for me to reflect on these three aspects in terms of present day America and to share this with others in hopes of sparking some constructive conversations with others. This invitation goes out to not only like-minded people, but anyone who believes that the current state of affairs need to change and has ideas about how to change them for the better of all Americans.