The Compact

Twelve months from today, November 4th, 2007; 366 days from today we'll go to the polls and quite literally decide the fate of America. It will be our doing in the 50 state elections that shall determine our leadership.

Up to that day, on the 4th day of each month, I will select a pertinent quotation of Thomas Paine and expand upon it for our times.

The Crisis

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

– Thomas Paine 23 December 1776

I'm guessing that's a little over dramatic. After all, it was meant to inspire the fence-sitters of the day to take an active role in a revolution that never saw more than 4000 men fighting on the side of independence.

Perhaps this next is more pertinent to our understanding of what is now at stake.

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights away. "Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. They consequently are instruments of injustice.”

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

"individuals...entered into a compact with each other..."

This bears repeating.

"individuals...entered into a compact with each other..."

No. It needs to be hollered-

"INDIVIDUALS ENTERED INTO A COMPACT WITH EACH OTHER."

You and I have a compact. A sober and solemn agreement regarding what we acknowledge to be our natural rights and the compact means that I have to defend your rights as if they were mine.

Because they are.

And now we must think of unnatural rights.

We shouldn't have to, but given the current state of affairs we must.

How about state-run universal health care?

How about allowing unbridled immigration by those that don't care about our compact?

How about granting power to liars and thieves for the benefit of few?

Something needs to be reviewed and revisited. By each and every thinking American. Our pact. Our compact. Our responsibility.

This is a turnpost.