- Tom Paine’s COMMON SENSE; Copy This Pamphlet
to Wake Up America
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- “The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all
mankind”- Thomas Paine
- by Jesse Lee and Rob Kall
- OpEdNews.com
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- At a time when the Tyrannical
King George, with his corporate cronies, were abusing the American
Colonists, Thomas Paine introduced a simple pamphlet, “COMMON SENSE,”
that broached ideas that swept through the colonies, energizing,
inspiring and activating the people. Paine’s COMMON SENSE played a
major role in educating and politicizing the people of colonial
America so they were ready to fight back and take America from the
British.
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- The newsletter that we at
Opednews.com are initiating and inviting you to take part in borrows
both its name and purpose from Paine’s seminal work, “Common Sense”.
It is conceived of as the next step in alternative media, the
step that will take us across the ideological chasm which this
administration has deliberately gutted in our nation’s media
landscape, where all the major news organizations have been beaten
down, intimidated by fear of loss of access.
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- Like the Phoenix that rises
from the ashes, our new COMMON SENSE will rise to educate the 70
percent of the population who still believe that there’s some proof
that Saddam or Iraq were connected to 9-11.
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- The
ideals of this newsletter are the same as those espoused in Paine’s
work, namely that “The world is my country, all mankind are my
brethren, and to do good is my religion”.
But no less important here is his technique of pamphleteering,
in order to put hard, accessible knowledge in the hands of the
citizenry, who alone have the power to seize back the government for
themselves.
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- In
this vein, Common Sense is offered on the web, via website and
email, in a printable, columned newsletter format, meant to be freely
photocopied and distributed widely, sowing the seeds of dissent where
the Republican elite have attempted to salt the land.
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- As
valuable as the alternative news community online has been, it is an
unavoidable fact that we have hit a wall in terms of “preaching to
the choir”. Those who
need the information most are lacking the internet access, savvy, or
curiosity and initiative necessary to search out the truth for
themselves. This newsletter will put the truth in plain sight, in an
easily accessible format, posted on bulletin boards, left out for
people to pick up at coffee shops, grocery stores, libraries,
convenience stores, and it is up to YOU to get it out there.
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- Those
who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must... undergo the
fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine
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- This
project was inspired by a reader who felt compelled to reach out to
his fellow citizens. He wrote us the following:
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- ‘At
my own expense, I put out an alternative monthly newspaper in Oshkosh
called "A Second Opinion"… All 75 copies that I put in the
public library are gone each month. I put another 25 copies in a
local coffeehouse and in the student union at UWO. A friend of
mine has told me that his friends in a south-side (blue-collar side of
town) Lutheran church choir consider "A Second Opinion" to
be next to the Bible for information! He Xeroxes copies for them
every month and brings them to choir practice! People have begun
emailing me asking for copies to be sent to them directly as an
attachment…Bush is going to find out that he can only live a lie so
long.’
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- Is there any reason that this
should not happen in every community across the country? There are
people primed and ready for honest news that has not been “foxed up.”
We especially need to get this news into the Midwestern and southern
“red” states.
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- The first edition of Common
Sense was sent to a list of approximately 50 individuals across
the country. With each of
them printing and distributing 100 copies or more, that is already a
circulation of 5000 in those communities which have systematically
squashed dissenting facts and opinions.
Imagine if there were a member of the alternative news
community distributing 100 copies in every “Bush-country” town
across the nation. Imagine
the ripples being sent through every hard working town in America as
one reader of the newsletter asks a friend, “Have you heard Bush is
trying to eliminate overtime pay?”
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- The new COMMON SENSE aims to
transform the relationship between alternative news sites and their
readers, many of whom we have come to know would like to do more. By
enabling each reader, each website publisher to become a pamphleteer,
we are empowering them all to have an opportunity to give the un-Foxified
truth new light.
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- We are well aware that those
influenced by Bush will not take our offering if our swords are drawn,
and the newsletter is designed to be potent but not strident in tone,
so we avoid giving a hostile or uncommitted audience any excuse to
dismiss it. If you are a
reader who would like to receive and distribute Common Sense contact us at commonsense@opednews.com
and sign up for the distribution list. It will arrive in your inbox as
a Word and pdf file and you will simply have to print out or photocopy
100 copies -or 10, or five, and drop them off at your
convenience, or just one post them on a bulletin board. Every action
can make a difference.If you operate a site and would like to help
distribute or contribute to Common
Sense, email us at commonsense@opednews.com
or go to www.opednews.com/commonsense111.htm
where you'll find archives of the most recent and past issues.
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- The corporate elitists who
have in many ways dominated American politics since its founding have
finally overstretched and awakened the sleeping giant of American
populism. We cannot let this opportunity pass.
The beginning of this movement will be the unseating of our
current profiteers extraordinaire, the end will be an America that
practices what it preaches for generations to come.
Some practical tips on
"publishing" and distributing Commonsense:
ADVICE ON PRINTING AND
DISTRIBUTION
***As you'll see, this is a
two-page document, meant to be front and back of one page. This can
actually be trickier than one would think if one does not have a two-sided
printer or copier available. We recommend printing out 100 copies of
the first page, and then taking that same stack of paper and printing out
100 copies of the second page on the back. If you haven't done this
before, you should experiment with one page first to make sure you're
putting the paper in the printer the right way (most printers have a
diagram of a folded page to show you how it prints).
***As mentioned before,
recommended distribution locations would be the local library, college
campus, health food store, grocery, convenience store, restaurant or cafe,
but obviously it's up to your judgment.
***Also, originally the
title of the newsletter was in a different font (diploma) in the Word
version, but it was changed back to Times New Roman when we realized not
everybody has the same fonts. If you want to play with the font, please
feel free.
***Good luck, and don't be
discouraged if you get some negative reactions, take it as a sign of how
much this really is needed.
Jesse Lee commonsense@opednews.com
is editor of the CommonSense newsletter, a regular columnist for
Opednews.com, with original publications at the Smirking Chimp and Yellow
Times, as well as republications at the Crisis Papers, the Free Press, and
numerous other sites and blogs. He is a founding contributor to the
platform of 2020 Democrats, and has worked with the Education for Peace in
Iraq Center (EPIC) in Washington D.C. where he was born and raised.
Rob
Kall rob@opednews.com
is publisher of progressive news and opinion website www.opednews.com
and organizer of cutting edge meetings that bring together world leaders,
such as the Winter Brain Meeting
and the StoryCon Summit Meeting on
the Art, Science and Application of Story This article is
copyright by Rob Kall, but permission is granted for reprint in print,
email, blog, or web media so long as this entire credit paragraph is
attached
Other
writings of Rob Kall
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