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[Octafish]

37. Paine thought ''regimes become corrupt when the propertied rich manipulate the laws.''

Last edited Wed Mar 19, 2014, 09:30 AM - Edit history (1)

Guy certainly would understand today's Wall Street on the Potomac.

From Tom Paine: A Political Life by John Keane:

If, as Paine thought, regimes become corrupt when the propertied rich manipulate the laws to grind down the poor, then a young republic like America could easily suffer the same fate, especially if its citizens fell under the influence of self-interested men of property. "A rich man makes a bonny traitor," he told his friend Joseph Reed, quoting James I. If that was so, then republican principles must be extended to the sphere of economic life. Men of wealth must be tamed by public ethics. Property and its corresponding "liberal" values must be subject to the universal "civic humanist" rule of civil and political rights. That would not fully eliminate disparities of wealth. But the availability of rights to all adult, male citizens, not just to property owners, would ensure ongoing controversies about how to divide that which is divisible. Such controversies would ensure that existing patterns of wealth and inequality would never be seen as natural, as reflecting the will of God, or as a brutal fact of economic life.

SOURCE:

http://goo.gl/IUHrKR

One thing I know, were Thomas Paine with us today, he'd side with William K. Black.