Common Sense by Thomas Paine (7/53)

As I've previously discussed here, anonymity on the web and on this blog is appropriate. After all, our Founding Fathers hid behind pseudonyms routinely. In this ongoing piece, I'm highlighting one of the more famous anonymous writings from a Founding Father - Common Sense by Thomas Paine.

I have heard it asserted by some, that as America has flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true; for I answer roundly that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power taken any notice of her. The commerce by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.

I love this paragraph... just exchange "Great Britain" with "The Federal Reserve."

Tim White