On Bastille Day, 2022

Some thoughts from Paine's RIGHTS OF MAN (1791)

Paine’s RIGHTS OF MAN, the template for democratic revolutions the world over, was written in answer to Edmund Burke’s attack on the French Revolution and defense of aristocracy and monarchy. Burke’s attack [Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790] shocked Paine and he pilloried his former colleague with the passage that follows. Below it there are two more quotes worth careful notice:

On Burke:
”Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection, that I can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who lingered out the most wretched of lives, a life without hope in the most miserable of prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand that hath purloined him from himself, he degenerates into a composition of art, and the genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his heroine must be a tragedy-victim expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of misery, sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon.”

Thomas Paine
Rights of Man, Part 1.3

“That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.”

Thomas Paine
Rights of Man, Part II

When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, then may the country boast of its constitution and its government.

Thomas Paine
Part 2.7 Chapter V. Ways and means of improving the condition of Europe, interspersed with miscellaneous observations

Vive la France, vive les Etats-Unis, vive la révolution du monde. !!