Tag: Thomas Paine

Should we stop watching the news?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn news

I’m old school, so my answer is “no.”

And yet, along with those people who’ve stopped watching the news because it’s too dire, I find it hard to cope with the information flowing into my world like a flood.

I find it harder to cope with the thinking of those people who only watch the news they agree with, say, all Fox or all CNN. This leads to “my party or the highway.” This is an easy route to take because it requires no thought, all you have to do is what Trump or Biden tells you to do. I’m not ready to hand my point of view or my vote to the head of any party.

It amazes me how many people fiercely argue in favor of one idea or another while, without shame, admitting they know little or nothing about the alternatives.

Time was, keeping informed was considered a civic duty, our way of contributing to and understanding the so-called “marketplace of ideas that justifies our rights to the freedoms of speech and press. This is what the founding fathers believed. But now, such things as civic duty are out of fashion.

I cannot help but remember what Thomas Paine wrote years ago in Common Sense:  “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

I’m old enough to believe that these words apply to the crises we face today. However, the first step is knowing what those crises are by reading the news.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell and his father Laurence R. Campbell were journalists and college journalism teachers. 

These are the times that try men’s souls

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn ecology, energy, Honor Killings, injustice, issues

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

 – Thomas Paine in “The American Crisis”

Thomas Paine (Common Sense) wrote the essays that comprise The American Crisis between 1776 and 1783. We have had many such times between 1783 and this moment and may, in fact, be living during such times today.

Wikipedia Photo

I have always liked the phrase The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot because those terms encapsulate so many of the oftentimes lazy and safe responses to the ideals we revere as a country as well as to the comfortable people one never finds “down in the trenches” when the moment comes to not only make a commitment but to sacrifice one’s time and money to engrave our ideals into the real fabric of everyone’s daily reality.

In Congress, business, the organized church, and other groups the committee is often mocked as a group that talks and ponders but never takes definitive action. If you want to bury a proposal, assign it to a committee. At the same time, committee members (like groups of concerned citizens talking during barbecues and dinner parties) believe talking and pondering is synonymous with action.

If asked, these summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots will say “I’m very involved with cleaning up rivers and lakes. . .saving and restoring-old growth forests. . .stopping human trafficking and female genital mutilation,” etc.

It’s tempting to respond with: “How many riverkeeper/keep-my-county-beautiful treks have you made to haul garbage bags of trash out of rivers, lakes, and shorelines. . .how many trees did you save or did you plant. . .how many mutilations did you stop?” Or, alternatively, are you an active (that is to say, a working) member of any groups or agencies working to improve the status quo of such issues?

It’s wrong to criticize friends, neighbors, and co-workers in this way, so the typical response to “I’m involved with…” is silence, and that’s one of the reasons why these are the times that try men’s souls.

–Malcolm