When Liberty Yields to Complexity: America's Constitutional Crossroads

Has the distinction between society and government become dangerously blurred? Thomas Paine's revolutionary insights from 1776 serve as a powerful lens through which we can examine our current political moment. The wisdom of Common Sense cuts through centuries of governmental evolution to expose fundamental truths about power, liberty, and the proper boundaries between community and state.

Paine's crucial observation that "Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness" establishes a framework that remains startlingly relevant. Society—our churches, schools, businesses, and voluntary associations—promotes happiness by uniting our affections. Government, even at its best, serves as a necessary restraint against human vice, functioning through punishment rather than positive reinforcement. When we confuse these distinct spheres or allow government to supplant society's natural functions, we undermine the very foundations of a free people.

The American experiment began with a limited vision of government authority, but over generations has expanded into a bewildering complexity where accountability becomes nearly impossible. Political parties, which Washington warned would become "potent agents" for subversion, now color nearly every aspect of American life. Our elegant system of checks and balances increasingly appears more ceremonial than functional, with true accountability for government overreach becoming vanishingly rare. 

Take a journey through Paine's prescient warnings and consider whether our continued faith in American institutions stems more from national pride than reason. Share your thoughts on the proper boundaries between society and government, and join the conversation about reclaiming the distinction that makes liberty possible.

Chapters

• 0:00 Society vs Government Distinction
• 1:10 Government as a Necessary Evil
• 2:40 Simple Society to Complex Government
• 4:35 Constitutional Failures and Political Parties
• 8:50 National Pride vs Constitutional Reality

Transcript

Taylor: 0:00

Common Sense Applied Today, chapter 1. Paine notes then in 1776, a common belief which so confounded the people then as it does now, when he says Some writers have confounded society with government as to leave little or no distinction between them, whereas they are not only different but have different origins. This is critical that, in order for a sovereign people to hold any government accountable, must understand the following Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections. Society consists of our churches, schools so long as they're under our control sports leagues, fraternities, contracts that create and regulate local commerce, stores and businesses. Society is natural In a true sense. It flows from the family.

Taylor: 0:47

Outward Government negatively applies today by restraining our vices. Society encourages intercourse or interaction. The government creates distinctions. Society is a patron, government is a punisher. Paine rightly explains 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. Ronald Reagan famously said the scariest statement from the government is hello, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Inherently, government can only affect change by means of punishment. Even in cases of providing benefit, it must do so by taking from one to give to another by compulsory means, with punishment as its lever Payne. Further states for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government which we might expect in a country without government. Quote in a country without government, we would expect high crime. This is manifest by the mere fact the USA has the highest prison population, both per capita and gross volume, than any nation on Earth. Additionally, there are many inner cities that are overrun with crime and violence. In 2020, seattle Washington saw city blocks taken over by occupiers and a police precinct was vacated. The area was then declared to be the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ for short. In a country with strong government, it sure looked like one without one in summer 2020. Spend some time in South Chicago along the southern border neighborhoods of DC, skid Row, la, abandoned towns in Appalachia or hollowed out Detroit, and you will be left wondering who is in charge of this place.

Taylor: 2:25

Payne continues. Our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer government, henry David Thoreau. Nearly a century after the founding of the USA, a nation as distinct from the country America that we contribute to our own meanness by continually upholding and supporting government. We do not uphold and support. By paying taxes, accepting their benefit, we load the gun aimed at ourselves. The government at once requires your voluntary consent, yet will render punishment for not voluntarily consenting. Payne explains our conundrum, for were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibility obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver. But that not being the case, he in fact finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest. 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.

Taylor: 3:31

Paine describes a new country, which America was. That, as it is inhabited, the first peoples in this state of liberty society will be their first thought. Men and women working together in harmony can accomplish much more together than alone. A small group of people, in short time, can erect a complex city or town, whereas a person working on his own his whole life may not complete his own home. So long as the people remain just to each other, no law or government would be made necessary. But as nothing in heaven is impregnable to vice, it will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue. It is probable that their first laws will have the title only of regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem.

Taylor: 4:16

Anyone who studies the beginning of our current form of government would hold this assessment to be true. In the beginning, the Constitution merely regulated outright commerce. Speech, privacy and natural liberties were left to society. The church, which had no punishment ability beyond disesteem, had more regulation over speech than the government ever could dream. Over time we have seen the government stretch its bounds beyond commerce to complicate the form and functions of government that the people don't know who or how to redress their grievances.

Taylor: 4:47

Payne notes absolute governments have this advantage with them that they are simple. If the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs, know likewise the remedy. He states, like one can easily see in today's United States government that its complexity is so exceedingly complex that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies. Some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine. I would interject that over time the American people have listened to political physicians to such a degree as to impose punishment, to enforce society and goodwill by taking from the able, to enable the whole, but to enable the unable, rob the rich, to subdue the poor, to expand government at every corner, to make up for moral virtue, ripping true virtue from the grasp of all. And we have abided a system where bureaucrats and administration legislate and Congress rubber stamps. Government never was the solution to every problem, but seems to have a hand in the cause of all of them.

Taylor: 5:54

Paine decries the English Constitution, which later Americans adopted, but in their own flavor. First, the remains of a monarchical tyranny in the person of the king. Today this is manifested in the form of president, leader of the free world, who, along with his millions of officers exercising their sovereign immunity to practice by license every manner of evil. Our current president and executive branch keep standing armies, prosecute war, which is violence, without congressional approval on foreign lands, create and enforce administrative laws, punitively counterfeit money there is no gold or silver as currency. They selectively enforce laws, such as at our southern border, etc. Secondly, he says there remains an aristocratical tyranny in the persons of the peers. Today, this is embodied by the Senate. These powerful figures two per state, no matter the geographic size or population, like aristocracy, wield that power in the interest of large corporate interests, statewide lobbies. These figures care less about the creation of a community park and more about what resources can be exchanged over state lines. They represent the state in like manner that Tim Cook represents Apple. They are peers. Thirdly, payne notes the new Republican materials and the persons of the commons in whose virtue depends the freedom of England. This commons is embodied by our House of Representatives.

Taylor: 7:16

The founding fathers of America stripped from the executive the judicial power and vested it as separate from the executive and legislative powers, a complex system of checks and balances to diffuse and decentralize the power. However, today most courts that people interact with are legislative tribunals or administrative courts. The judiciary simply puts the hat of the legislative or executive branch from suit to suit. Simply puts the hat of the legislative or executive branch from suit to suit. Today, the complex problem of parties has infected the very bloodstream of the United States government, as first president of the United States, george Washington, said. However, political parties may now and then answer popular ends. They are likely, in the course of time and things to become potent agents by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Taylor: 8:12

In our current atmosphere, it takes one not touched by the callousness of government to not see. Nearly all American functions are dyed in the political team colors of red or blue. Policies, judges and politicians are either left or right. Both march in lockstep via a Galilean dialectic till. All jobs are government regulated, all families and marriages are licensed by the state and children are registered and serialized as property of the state. Though society may deny this truth, we are knocking at that gate. To say the Constitution of the United States is a union of three powers reciprocally checking each other is farcical.

Taylor: 8:50

Either the words have no meaning or they are flat contradictions. Though the expressions be pleasantly arranged, yet when examined they appear idle and ambiguous. And it will always happen that the nicest construction that words are capable of, when applied to the description of something which either cannot exist or is too incomprehensible to be within the compass of description, will the words be of sound only. And though they may amuse the ear. They cannot inform the mind.

Taylor: 9:17

I plainly ask when has one branch of government checked or balanced the power or known a listen behavior of another branch? Consider the long line of scandal in the last century that has gone unchecked. What accountability can you remember? Though we have been wise enough to shut and lock the door against absolute monarchy or power, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the political parties in possession of the key. The prejudice of Americans in favor of our own government, presidents, congress and judges arises as much more from national pride than reason. Laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favor of modes and forms, the plain truth is that it is wholly owing to the constitution of the people and not the constitution of the government that the USA is not as oppressive as China. Inquiring to the errors of our form of government is at this time highly necessary, for as we are never in proper condition of doing justice to others while we continue under the influence and favor of a rotten constitution of government, that's it.