Paine and Gain

                I am writing this after Dr. Karen King’s lecture and I imagine that my subsequent statements and reflections cannot but be colored by her musings on martyrdom. Such remarks are especially salient in light of this week’s readings. Certainly they help bring that which was lingering up to the fore, namely the question: what is worth dying for? Could, say, a tax on paper products ever possibly provide reason enough to shed one’s blood, or even that of another person? What, if anything, can justify violence?

                Beyond that, I am immediately struck by rhetoric, specifically that of Thomas Paine. For instance, the introduction to the section of his pamphlet entitled “Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs”: “In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.” Now, to assert the absence of rhetorical manipulation is, and has been since antiquity, the act of rhetorical manipulation par excellence. It is at the heart of the would-be orator’s attempt at an appeal to ethos, and the founding fathers knew their classics enough to realize as much. But what about the rest of Colonial America? Who was Paine’s audience? I fear that the answer to this question leads, like a boomerang, back to my opening musings on martyrdom.