Background
What would Thomas Paine say today in light of more than 100 years of US Presidents and US Congresses ever more expanding the power of central government at the expense of individual liberty and free markets?
Where Thomas Paine used British examples, I have replaced with them contemporary US counterparts. I have also added emphasis.
Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the US Constitution
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
[Comment: Thomas Paine would write exactly the same words today.]
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of our Presidents, Senators, and Representatives in Washington, DC are built upon the ruins of our liberty.
[Comment: The US is only 236 years old, but since about the turn of the 20th century it has become more intolerable in Paine’s words. Too many Americans have become complacent and have forgotten that government is but a necessary evil.]
For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
[Comment: The US has become a cradle to grave welfare state in willful ignorance of the common sense of the Founders.]
I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered; and with this maxim in view I offer a few remarks on the so much boasted US constitution.
[Comment: I am not entirely sure what Thomas Paine was describing here, but I read it to mean the simpler government is the less complexity, entitlements, vested interests etc. there will be. The simpler, the easier it can be repaired. As we see today how do we fix a massive entitlement program like Social Security when all employees have to pay taxes into it and are expecting to receive their entitlements later in life?]
But the constitution, laws, and regulation of the US are so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.
[Comment: Thomas Paine nailed it down!]
To say that the US constitution is an UNION of three powers, reciprocally CHECKING each other, is farcical; either the words have no meaning, or they are flat contradictions.
[Comment: Thomas Paine would write that about the sad state of affairs in the US, which has developed over many decades. Just take the absurd ObamaCare decision of the US Supreme Court.]
First. — That the US President is not to be trusted without being looked after; or in other words, that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of the US Presidency.
[Comment: How true!]
Secondly. — That the US Representatives and Senators, by being appointed for that purpose, are either wiser or more worthy of confidence than the US President.
[Comment: How much are our elected representatives really worthy of our confidence?]
But as the same US constitution which gives the elected Representatives a power to check the President by withholding the supplies, gives afterwards the US President a power to check the Representatives, by empowering him to reject their other bills; it again supposes that the President is wiser than those whom it has already supposed to be wiser than him. A mere absurdity!
[Comment: Right on!]
That the US President has become this overbearing part in the US constitution needs not be mentioned, and that it derives its whole consequence merely from being the giver of places and pensions is self-evident; wherefore, though we have been wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute power, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the US President in possession of the key.
[Comment: Are constitutional term limits on the presidency enough?]
Wherefore, laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes and forms, the plain truth is that IT IS WHOLLY OWING TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE, AND NOT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE GOVERNMENT that the US government is not as oppressive as in other parts of the world.
And as a man who is attached to a prostitute is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.
[Comment: The US has an exceptionally good constitution, but powerful forces within the US have derided and undermined it for decades. Just ask US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about that.]
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