Common Sense—
Part II: Thomas Paine’s Solution for the Rest of the World
Volume 3, Program 27
Airdate: April 21, 1998
Both educationally and socially, home schoolers are revolutionaries. Today on Home School Heartbeat,Michael Farris, president of Home School Legal Defense Association, discusses a lesson home schoolers can learn from one of the great thinkers of the American Revolution.
Mike: Just a few years after publishing his well-known pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote another important work analyzing the American Revolution, entitled The Rights of Man. In one passage, he writes the following:
“So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. . . .
“. . . No sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock, and man began to contemplate redress.”
There’s a lesson for us here. Just as a freedom could not be found in the Old World, so too in most countries today it’s hard to find solutions to the worldwide problem of family disintegration. We are, however, beginning to see the glimmers of light. Home schoolers in South Africa and Germany have come to us for help in stopping the repressive practices of their governments.
Thomas Paine said that America’s example inspired the whole world to seek freedom. Today, American home school pioneers are again offering an important solution to the rest world. The light of your example has shone very brightly, indeed. I’m Michael Farris.
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