Thanks to Amazon.com and their affiliate program, Amazon Associates, Democracy Chronicles is proud to present a new addition to our democracy focused website, Democracy Books. With Democracy Books, we hope to bring our readers the opportunity to read some of the great writers of democracy theory combined with analysis of the modern-day international struggle for democracy.
The Democracy Books Section
Take a look at the new Democracy Books section from Democracy Chronicles! Part of the proceeds come to DC and help support our website. Enjoy!
Here is a taste of our favorite writer, Thomas Paine, writing in January of 1776:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly 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 benefit, is preferable to all others.
The complete work, titled “Common Sense” can be found in full at the U.S. government’s online history archives. This is strongly recommended reading.
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