Redmenace
01-04-2008, 03:05 PM
Someone earlier posted a quote from the opening paragraph of Thomas Paine's the Crisis. It was a moving quote and so I decided to look up the rest of the document to see what else Paine had to say. I found the following paragraph hauntingly relevant to the current state of the grassroots and this forum.
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'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.
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Our Founders were extremely brilliant men and just as we look to our Constitution to solve the current ills of our federal government. So too should we look to the advice given by our founders to solve our current problems. We should not look at Dr. Paul's 5th place finish in Iowa as a setback but instead as an opportunity to reexamine ourselves and through this reexamination to stiffen our resolve and use the knowledge gained to fight harder and smarter.
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'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.
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Our Founders were extremely brilliant men and just as we look to our Constitution to solve the current ills of our federal government. So too should we look to the advice given by our founders to solve our current problems. We should not look at Dr. Paul's 5th place finish in Iowa as a setback but instead as an opportunity to reexamine ourselves and through this reexamination to stiffen our resolve and use the knowledge gained to fight harder and smarter.