ZGram - 1/18/2003 - "Thomas Paine in honor of the day"
irimland@zundelsite.org
irimland@zundelsite.org
Sat, 18 Jan 2003 18:37:34 -0800
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
1/18/2003
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
If you want to know what is happening with the peace rallies, go to
www.whatreallyhappened.com
The claim is that 300,000 assembled in Washington. The BBC claims 50,000.
I thought that in honor of the occasion, I should send you some
old-fashioned inspiration:
[start]
Thomas Paine's Clarion Call For Freedom
12-3-2
When in 1776 the United States of America broke away from Britain, a
country without a written constitution, with an established Church
and an unelected House of Lords, Thomas Paine, an artisan from
Thetford in Norfolk England, made a call for freedom that is still
reverberating around the world today. Thanks mainly to the American
broadcaster, Jeff Rense, and the Internet.
At the end of the 18th century this great free thinking philosopher
was wanted dead or alive in England for daring to fight for
democracy, votes for all men and women, the abolition of slavery and
a welfare state with pensions for all. Those caught reading the
following books were heavily fined or transported to Australia:
Common Sense 1776
"The sun never shone on a greater worth. It is not the concern of a
day, a year or an age, posterity is virtually involved in the
contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time,
by the proceedings now: now is the seed time of American continental
union, faith and honour. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe,
Asia and Africa hath long expelled freedom. Europe regards freedom
like a stranger, and England hath given freedom warning to depart. O
America, receive the fugitive freedom, and prepare, it time, an
asylum for humankind."
Crisis 1777
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will in this crisis turn from the service of his
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 the consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more
glorious the triumph. Let it be told to the future world, that in the
depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the
city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to
meet and to repulse it."
Rights of Man 1791
"When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy,
neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails
are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in
want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend
because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said,
then may that country boast its constitution and government
Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion
is to do good."
The Age of Reason 1794
"I hope for happiness beyond this life, I believe in the equality of
man, and I believe that religious duties consist in going justice,
loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy. I
do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the
Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Muslim Church, by the
Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is
my own Church.
"All national institutions of Churches appear to me no other than
human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and to
monopolise power and profit Now some will say are we to have no word
of God, no revelation? I answer, yes, there is a word of God, there
is a revelation, the word of God is in the creation we behold, and it
is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter,
that God, speaketh, universally to man."
"Where freedom is", said Benjamin Franklin, "there is my country,"
"Where freedom is not," replied his friend Paine, "there is mine,"
[END]
===
(Source: http://www.rense.com/general32/callfor.htm )