Common Sense That Changed the World

Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” is one of the ur-texts of American democracy, the match that lighted the fuse of independence. First published anonymously in January 1776, Paine’s pamphlet became a colonial bestseller. In a would-be nation of 4 million, some 150,000 copies were sold. That’s the equivalent of selling 12 million copies in today’s United States. And influential? Thomas Jefferson used it as a template when he sat down a few months later to write the Declaration of Independence, distilling many of Paine’s ideas -- the natural dignity of humanity, the right to self-determination -- in both content and form.

What made “Common Sense” so instrumental? In the first place, it appeared in a society that had no mass media, no entertainment-industrial complex -- nothing, in other words, to compete with the urgency of Paine’s message. At the same time, Paine consciously sought to write in the vernacular, to speak to people in their own language, to develop a truly democratic style.

Ultimately, this cut both ways, galvanizing the public even as it frightened many of the gentry upon whom the new American nation would depend. When, in 1781, the American Revolution ended, Paine found himself shut out of the government, reduced to the status of “a refugee, and that of the most extraordinary kind, a refugee from the Country that I have befriended.”

Six years later, he left America for Europe, and did not return until 1802. Even then, he continued to be marginalized. In 1805, John Adams described him as “a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf.” Reframe the syntax and it’s not hard to imagine the same being said in certain quarters of present-day provocateurs such as Michael Moore.

There is, of course, a loose lineage at work here; just look at “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Released mere months before the 2004 election, it used the language of film to reach the widest possible audience. For Moore, however -- much like his right-wing counterparts Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter -- the goal seems less to engage the audience than to rile them up.

Paine also meant to stir emotions, but in a far more subtle way. Reading “Common Sense,” I’m struck by its elegant structure, its writerliness, the way it functions as diatribe and literature at once. Developed in four parts, it establishes a theory of society and government, which is then used to critique the British system and to offer an impassioned plea for independence. Finally, it lays out an American template, a vision of how Paine’s democracy might work.

Equally important, it makes its case for revolution on the most pragmatic terms, focusing on security and economic independence, issues that resonate to this day. For Paine, the outcome was as important as the message, and he was careful to seek common ground. The intent, in other words, was less polemic than persuasion, to address people on both sides of the issue, and, in the process, carry the debate.

In many ways, such a strategy speaks to our current crisis of divisiveness, our inability to see eye to eye. At the same time, it also suggests the intractability of the problem, because we no longer live in an America that in any way resembles the one Paine knew. We’ve grown too big, too scattered, barraged with information and opinion while somehow insulating ourselves from opposing points of view.

As to why this is, essayist and editor Lewis Lapham offers one explanation in his recent book “Gag Rule,” suggesting that what Paine excelled at -- and what we, as a society, appear to have lost -- is the ability to carry on a logical argument.

For Lapham, that’s a consequence of the decline of reading and the rise of electronic media, in which everything has come to coexist in a never-ending present tense. “Nothing necessarily follows from anything else,” he laments. “Sequence becomes merely additive instead of causative -- the images bereft of memory, speaking to their own reflections in a vocabulary better suited to the sale of a product than to the articulation of a thought.”

Lapham’s got a valid point; we do live in a culture in which logic yields to gut reaction, in which emotion routinely triumphs over intellect. Yet I can’t help but think that he shortchanges the grass-roots effect of 24-hour news (when news is really happening), the cacophony of the global marketplace, and most of all, the Internet -- because what else were pamphleteers like Paine if not the bloggers of their day?

In fact, Paine’s decision to address his fellow colonists directly was as innovative in his own age as the blogosphere is in ours. This is part of why he continues to shine on, indispensable for all this time. The message of “Common Sense” is crystal clear, as it has always been: Engagement is crucial, one person can make a difference, an idea can change the world. That’s the seed of American independence, as valid -- indeed, as vital -- as it was 229 years ago.