{"id":85,"date":"2019-05-19T00:09:06","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T00:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/?page_id=85"},"modified":"2026-02-25T03:19:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:19:16","slug":"home-page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In 1776 Thomas Paine published a pamphlet titled Common Sense.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was an Englishman who had been in the colonies for only 14 months, considered to be an intellectual and a radical thinker. For some his name is not as well known among the other great leaders of the American Revolution, but it was this document that greatly influenced the general population. Without it, the majority of common people might not have seen a reason to fight and may not have responded to the call of Washington and the Continental Congress to form militias. He succinctly states: “I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this same spirit I\nwrite this Blog, applying it to certain political and economic problems of our\nday. Paine’s choice of the title Common Sense<\/em> and being a radical\nthinker may seem antithetical, but in fact they are not. We come to associate\nradicalism with extremism, violence and chaos. But the original meaning and\nsense of the term is quite different. Radical derives from the Greek word radix<\/em>, which means root. A radical\nsolution to a problem is one that goes to its root, and from there attempts to\nfinds a solution. The opposite of radical is conservative, whereby problems are\nsolved by eliminating troubling or painful symptoms, not the underlying cause\nor root of the problem.  Conservatism\nthus produces a layering of solutions upon the original one, and may thus give\nthe appearance of preserving the status\nquo<\/em>.  A radical solution appears to\nresult in chaos, because it may overturn the existing order, sweeping away all\nof the conservative layers, in solving the problem.  Tom Paine saw the\nexisting order of his time, the English Monarchy, as the root cause of the\ncolony’s problems, and therefore any solution had to be one that either caused\nthe Monarchy to address specific complaints of the colonists (conservative) or to\nremove the colonies from English sovereignty altogether (radical). The latter\nhe considered to be far more effective, because the former would continually\nrequire the Monarch to address new complaints, thus creating the layering of\nsolutions.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subjects of this\nBlog will primarily be political and economic. \nIts purpose is to address such problems using the radical vs.\nconservative paradigm, selecting the best approach using a generous amount of common sense<\/em>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initial, and at present only, blog is about one of the most pressing political issues of our day, the Second Amendment<\/a> and its relation to gun violence.  View it by selecting the Blog<\/strong> menu dropdown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Lefkovitz<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1776 Thomas Paine published a pamphlet titled Common Sense. He was an Englishman who had been in the colonies for only 14 months, considered to be an intellectual and a radical thinker. For some his name is not as well known among the other great leaders of the American Revolution, but it was this document … Continue reading “Common Sense”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-85","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/85\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/just5101.temp.domains\/~commonu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}