Hello and welcome to Classically Speaking! Today is the second of several audio posts from the 47-page statement that Thomas Paine based on the principles of equality, independence, and freedom from slavery, tyranny, and absolute governments, e.g. authoritarianism, dictatorship, monarchy, oligarchy, divine right, hereditary rule…
Whether it be the struggle to obtain freedom and independence, or the struggle to keep it, the stakes are the same— To be ruled, to be enslaved, to be property— Or to be free to live life your own way.
2. Hereditary Rule and Divine Right
“Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.”
— Thomas Paine , Common Sense, 1776
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