The Price of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance: Lessons from Thomas Paine

Freedom is under siege, and Thomas Paine's centuries-old words offer a startling mirror to our modern predicament. 

The wisdom found in "Common Sense" transcends time, speaking directly to our contemporary struggles against the ever-expanding reach of government power. Where once Americans battled a distant king, we now find ourselves confronting enemies within our own institutions—agencies grown corrupt, elites sacrificing our blood and treasure for personal gain, and a regulatory state that transforms what was once free into something licensed, registered, and controlled.

Martin Luther King Jr. showed us that "unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality," echoing Paine's revolutionary spirit through nonviolent resistance. Both understood that exposing injustice requires courage and conviction, especially when laws themselves become tools of oppression. As we witness endless foreign entanglements while our own borders remain vulnerable, we must question what Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan ever had against Kansas that justified sending our children to die there.

The choices we make today will echo into eternity, just as Paine warned. Like "a name engraved with the point of a pen on the tender ring of a young oak," our decisions will grow more visible with time, leaving marks our descendants will read "in full-grown letters." From the Tuskegee experiments to modern surveillance, from false flags to manufactured crises, the pattern of government overreach spans generations. America was meant to be "an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberties," yet that vision fades as our fundamental rights become mere privileges granted by the state.

Will you stand with those who "dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant"? America can only truly be the home of the free if we are brave enough to reclaim it. Listen now and rediscover what liberty actually means.

Chapters

• 0:01 Introducing Paine's Common Sense
• 0:33 MLK's Path of Unarmed Truth
• 1:37 Government Interest vs. American Needs
• 3:17 Freedom's Struggle Against Oppression
• 4:33 Liberty Lost and Rediscovery
• 8:22 The Clarion Call for Freedom

Transcript

Taylor: 0:01

Common Sense Applied Today, chapter 3. Payne in Chapter 3, offers nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments and common sense. In Thomas Payne's day, he stated, Men of all ranks have embarked in a controversy from different motives and various designs, but all have been ineffectual and the period of debate is closed. Arms at the last resource decide the contest. While history proved Payne true and America was gloriously successful in establishing self-rule, we no longer contest with a king so far away, but with ourselves in determining truth. In our day, martin Luther King Jr showed us the way to change the direction of our nation under the direction of the country. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated, stronger than evil. Triumphant King exposed to the indifferent the continued subjugation of our brothers and sisters, all brothers of mankind. When stones were cast and not thrown back, the subjugator was exposed. Law had been the enabler. No brother seeks to war with his own brother, but law alone can license outright anger. Paine recites the sun never shines on a cause of greater worth. Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province or a kingdom, but a continent of at least one-eighth part of the habitable globe. Tis not the concern of a day, a year or an age Posterity are virtually involved in the contest and will become more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings. Now these words ring true, as they always do. We must grapple with choices of men now past. We'd be wise to take advice from the future. The least fractured now, payne describes, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pen on the tender ring of a young oak. The wound will enlarge with the tree and posterity read it in full-grown letters. As we now feel the sting of agencies grown in corruption, we must take note. The choices we make will echo far into the future.

Taylor: 2:00

Benjamin Franklin explained one who sacrifices freedom for security will have neither security or freedom and deserves neither. We must be conscious the tab we create for interest will be paid into eternity. As we struggle today under the weight of our debt, paying interest on money long gone and spent, I ask if it's wise to continue Adopting from pain. We have boasted the protection of a strong federal government without considering that her motive was interest, not attachment, that she did not protect us from her enemies on our own account, but from her enemies on her own account from those who had no quarrel with us on any other account. Today we raise troops to fight overseas, to protect us from what? Yet we ignore the continued invasion at our borders. Those who invade take our jobs, our resources and do so as if entitled.

Taylor: 2:52

What did Vietnam, korea, iraq, afghanistan, ukraine or Iran have against Kansas that caused her to send sons and daughters to die there? The truth is well known. Commercial interests of others, elites being entitled sacrifice our blood and treasure to die there. The truth is well known. Commercial interests of others, elites being entitled sacrifice our blood and treasure to profit themselves. And this seems to go on forever. Let DC, her K Street interest with ties to fat cats on Wall Street, waive their pretension to the continent or the continent throw off the dependents. And we should be at peace with Iran and North Korea.

Taylor: 3:24

Adapted from Paine's statements. But DC is the parent, say some, then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war on their families. Paine clearly states this new world hath been asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberties from every part of the globe. Ever the cause to head farther west to carve out a small slice of freedom. Let us not forget the call away from oppression. This land continually blesses us with.

Taylor: 3:54

My own family, drawn from Europe, came to both Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Each generation pushed the frontier in search of further liberty and freedom. The state has never been a friend and was always there to oppress them. At one point my family was subject to an extermination order of the state and fled over the Rockies for freedom. They settled the barren land, only to have it taken again using the same means to oppress them brute force. They chose the protection of the oppressor. That state was Utah. A land once free was conquered by DC.

Taylor: 4:26

Pain observes then, as is true now. What have we to do with? Setting the world at defiance? Our plan is commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all the world, because it is in the interest of all to have America a free port. Her trade will always be a protection. Our corn will fetch its price in any market in the globe and our imported goods must be paid for by them. Where we will, from DC, have stemmed programs and policies that have quite literally killed us, from the Tuskegee experiments to MKUltra, from the Gulf of Tonkin to weapons of mass destruction. Even COVID was paid for by DC and unleashed on the world and killed us. Pain laments the blood of the slain. The weeping voice of nature cries. It is time to part.

Taylor: 5:13

Then as now, pain goes on to say the present Constitution is merely temporary. As parents, we can have no joy knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure anything which we may bequeath posterity. And by a plain method of agreement we are running the next generation into debt. We ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. He explains of those who would continue to go along this course are as follows interested men who are not to be trusted. Weak men who cannot see. Prejudiced men who will not see, and a certain set of moderate men who think better of DC, wall Street and the elite than it deserves. And this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities than all the other three.

Taylor: 6:00

It is good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow. The evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness from which all American property is possessed, until you lose family to a banker's war, or find your family ripped apart by unjust, excessive incarceration, until your body harmed by government-sponsored medical experimentation, taxed for debts paid to a foreign land as bribes, like to Iran. Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offenses of DC, k Street and Wall Street and, still, hoping for the best, are apt to call out Come, we shall be friends again. For all this, can you hereafter love, honor and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then you are only deceiving yourselves by your delay, bringing ruin upon posterity. If you have not been imposed upon to give of your liberty, I question if you know what liberty truly is. Things what's free are now licensed, regulated, registered and certified. Every dollar exchanged, taxed and all right to privacy is mere privilege at best. Payne declares and I also.

Taylor: 7:13

I mean it not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from the unmanly slumbers that we may pursue determinately some fixed object. Never can true reconcealment grow where runes of deadly hate have pierced so deep. Time has displayed, without any doubt, the inability to hold true wrongdoers to account. Entire agencies, departments and near armies take strength in their numbers and unopposition to violate and injure. Redress of our grievances has become but a platitude. Once precedent sets in, one false flag leads to another. Once the first check is cashed, the medical labs grows into monsters, creating a disease to then search for a cure while no one seems the wiser.

Taylor: 8:00

Pain petitions Instead of going forward. Shall we go backward or be perpetually quarreling or ridiculously petitioning? America is only a secondary object in the system of DC politics. Dc consults the good of this country no farther than it answers her own purpose. A government which cannot preserve the peace is no government at all, and in that case we pay money for nothing and pray. What is it that the DC can do? Whose power will be holy on paper? Dc, the elites, wall Street are nothing but for the people of America and the power and deference we give them to rule. What do they have to offer but title and station that we do not grant as on full display for all the world to see. Texas must defend its own border. An invasion, though by any other names, is still an invasion. Dc has no resources, save it be those the states allow it.

Taylor: 8:52

Quoting Draganati, payne says the science of a politician consists in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men would have deserved the gratitude of ages, who should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness with the least national expense. Should the law of God and rational Ben be king. To do no injury, to not trespass. With every injury a remedy provide, I tell you, friend, that does not make havoc of mankind.

Taylor: 9:22

Pain expresses that in free countries the law is king and there ought to be no other. What does the conscious cry To in every moment? Do what's right, do no injury, do not trespass, and all will ultimately be right. There are injuries that cannot be forgiven for a government who violates this law held higher than the rest. O ye that love mankind pain excites. Ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth. Every spot of the world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. The world regards her like a stranger and given her warning to depart, o receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for this mankind. This may be declared America is the home of the free, but only if you are brave.