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]
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(Source:  http://www.rense.com/general32/callfor.htm )