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I like to think of myself as an independent thinker. This book does a great job of breaking down some pretty big problems with government and society. If you are a parent or younger than 40, I finished the book with a bit of different perspective. I actually am not a fan of Mr. Beck, never seen his show. However he does seem to make some very valid points, especially about the economic troubles facing our nation. So, it's a fast read and if you are open minded, it's interesting and does make common sense.

The title says it all. The first half is written by the author with the second half written by Thomas Payne. We have heard that common sense isn't so common and this book outlines why. Straight and to the point Glenn points to all the ways we went wrong and what we need to do to fix it.

Glenn Beck is at the forefront of the Republican purity purge. He's constantly denouncing this or that GOP politician for deviations from his ideological line. Recently, he extended this into the past, attacking Teddy Roosevelt as a RINO because he once made an inoccuous comment about being in favor of wealth as long as it was acquired by means that weren't socially destructive (apparently Beck is in favor of socially destructive behaviour as long as it produces wealth for someone). And yet, he's done the reverse here: he's tried to claim an icon of the Left as being on HIS side. Tom Paine, whose objection to onerous taxes was a) that the burden fell too heavily on the poor (so he proposed hiking taxes on the rich, including a top land tax of 100%) and b) that it was spent on court placeholders and the war machine instead of being used to help the unfortunate ("defense", meaning offense, is the one area Beck WOULDN'T cut if he were in power). Paine practically _invented_ the redistributive purpose which is precisely what Beck and his ilk hate so much about tax. The Beckbots lap this stuff up. They've never read any Tom Paine: they've been told about Common Sense by someone who didn't understand it, and they don't know that he wrote anything else. Even the First Part of The Rights of Man would probably be too egalitarian for them; if they ever read Part Two (OMG socialism!), or The Age of Reason (ZOMG atheism!), let alone Agrarian Justice (OMFG communism!), their heads would explode. One might think that, once Mr Beck had told them the name, they'd at least look it up on Wikipedia. Do they have no curiosity at all? Are they actively afraid of learning anything? The Right can't have Thomas Paine, Mr Beck. You might as well try to claim Karl Marx.

I have not read this eye-opening type of book in years. It is to the point, and nothing left out!

Hated it. Beck alienated me in the introduction but I pushed on and forced myself to finish it. Here's my problem: please people if you truly want to understand Thomas Paine then read Thomas Paine. Primary sources are a much better way to get what a person is saying. Secondary sources are someone telling you what someone else thinks-occasionally helpful but always subjective. Also everyone knows that complaining and ranting get old without offers of solutions. I hope people take him for the comedic media person he is and not a true journalist or writer in any sense of the word.

Reviews

In "Common Sense", Glenn Beck makes the arguments for why and how the US government is out of control and needs to be brought back under its constitutional limits. If you like his radio show, then you'll probably like this audio-book. He makes a good case for a revolution of ideas in Washington, though that likely won't be enough. He didn't make nearly the same compelling case as Thomas Paine did, but then again, our 'king' isn't sending troops into our cities and homes either. Though we are just as American as the Founders were, we are a different people now, by both choice and by circumstance. In the colonies, a spirit of independence and self-reliance ran deep at that time. You were responsible for clearing your own land, building your own home, growing your own food, and making your own way in the world. There was no government there to offer assistance -- if you wanted to do something, you usually had to do it yourself. And when you're almost entirely self-reliant, you naturally don't want some far-away, out-of-touch government demanding that you hand over your hard-earned property or money. If you're self-reliant, why SHOULD you have to give the government anything but the bare minimum to maintain a national defense? Beck also describes how for the past century, Progressivism has slowly eroded that spirit of independence and self-reliance. We individuals have relinquished more and more of our rights and responsibilities over to the State. Our current government is drenched in progressive, socialist-democratic principles which require an ever-increasing, young, vibrant population to fund the financial 'pyramid' base of the progressive tax-and-give system. But the reality is that our society is aging and declining, though not nearly as precipitously as Europe's and Russia's. Today, we want others to take care of us and advocate for us because it's easier and more expedient than to do it ourselves. It's easier to have taxes taken out of our paychecks for welfare than to care for the family down the street, and it's easier to ship our kids off to public/government schools everyday rather than teach them ourselves. When we need heat in the winter, we don't go and chop down a tree in the forest, we just press a button and then pay the gas-bill. But what exactly has Washington done for us that we couldn't do ourselves? The economy? Education? Welfare? What are these politicians and this bloated bureaucracy doing that the societies of our great-grandparents couldn't? And are they doing it better or worse? Why do we need some govt agency thousands of miles away taking our money, running it through their wasteful, massive bureaucracy, so our neighbors can collect a meager unemployment or food-stamps? Wouldn't it make more sense to cut out the govt and its millions of 'middle-men'? Today, it seems like many Americans have a spirit of apathy, comfort and dependence, though not nearly as much as before mid-2008. We likely won't put out the fire of extreme governance until we absolutely have to -- when it becomes intolerable. We won't act until we're suffering, and suffering terribly under hyper-inflation and choking over-regulation. We already put up with much more than the Founders ever would have imagined. Who says I can't cut down a tree on my own land that I planted and that I cared for? The Founders were steeped and rooted in Judeo-Christian values from their upbringing and the Great Awakening, and they were already used to being self-reliant. That was simply how they were raised, by necessity. Those Judeo-Christian values esteem personal freedom and self-regulation, so it was almost natural that they would want independence from an encroaching State. In our new progressive system, what values are taught other than to 'love thy State/government' and 'love thy planet'? What exactly are the moral values of Progressivism? It can't be 'thou shalt not steal' because that would violate their principles of the redistribution of wealth and their hatred of private property. And they can't say 'thou shalt not kill' because of population controls and abortion rights. And most certainly they can't say 'thou shalt honor God' because that would make Him, not the State, the Supreme Authority/Power in the land. Progressivism preaches and reinforces dependence on the State, and not God -- nor your neighbors and community. In our time and in our society, who exactly is teaching those Judeo-Christian values that laid the foundation of the country? The schools are not allowed to by the progressives, and the churches are quite empty compared to what they used to be. It seems as though the progressive media and education system denigrates common-sense religious values at every turn, or at least minimizes/ignores them. So where and when can Americans possibly re-learn the values of self-reliance and self-regulation? If we are to right the ship of the American Republic and prevent her from floundering on the rocks of Progressivism, then the only sensible place for those values to be propagated is from the home. And that takes patience, time, and the simple will to do so. My books: The Time of Jacob's Trouble, Endeavor in Time