Paine's Faith

For my birthday a few months back my sister gave me a book I've long wanted to read: Hope Dies Last by Studs Terkel. It's a book of interviews with social activists that reminds us that even when the state of the world appears to be impossibly bleak, people can still act to make a difference. In the first few pages, I find this quotation from Thomas Paine in 1791:

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. . . . In such a situation, man becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as a kindred.

When I first read this I thought, “Amen, brother,” especially with regard to the slavery of fear. But at the same time I wondered about Paine's faith in “truth” and whether such faith is possible or wise today. I want to believe, I really do, but...

Maybe the rest of the book will convince me...

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