Common sense has served as democratic resistance since the American revolution
Evidence
The very thing that is at stake here—common sense—is also a resource for protecting democracy against conspiracism. It always has been. The idea of common sense has a political history rooted in the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, inserted into the Declaration of Independence in the form of “self-evident truths,” and popularized in the most important American revolutionary tract, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Paine’s great pamphlet offers us a model of common sense as the basis of democracy and as the touchstone of resistance—in his case against the malignant normality of colonial rule. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 308
Categorization
- SEED: Potential essay tracing common sense as a recurrent anti-authority political resource, from Paine against divine right to modern distrust of expert conspiracism.
- XREF: connects to: Conspiracy exposure has at times served democratic reform — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 33; Common sense is the shared ground that makes democratic exchange possible; Common sense is a historical construct with changing ideological contents. (+1 more)