Common Sense

These are dangerous words for dangerous times. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine demolished monarchy as an idea, as a principle, and as a political option. In America, Paine argued, the law is king, and no person ever will be. Now 250 years later, the best-selling pamphlet of the American Revolution has a renewed urgency. The incendiary words that sparked American independence challenge us not only to understand what America once was, but to decide what America will be. This No Kings Edition reproduces the text of the Bradford/Towne printing of February 14, 1776 - the edition Thomas Paine himself supervised, expanded, and considered definitive - held in the Charles Deering Library at Northwestern University. It includes a preface by Ben Ponder, Ph.D., placing Paine's argument against monarchy in its contemporary context.