American crisis

What Hacker News says

1. whoknew1122Jun 2021
   At that time, most Americans still saw themselves as British subjects. People weren't American once the Declaration was penned -- there was still a war to win.

   If the 'most influential American writer' means 'the one most important to the US becoming its own country', then the answer is Thomas Paine. His American Crisis papers buttressed the flagging revolutionary movement and made the common folk actually care. Before Paine's propaganda, the majority of colonists saw themselves as British subjects and the fight for independence was only really supported by the landed gentry.

   The American Crisis papers made the common folk care, and without them there likely isn't enough popular support to win the war.

   Paine > Jefferson as pertains to the American cause (and Paine > Jefferson as person).

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2. rsweeney21Sep 2020
   Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" and "The American Crisis" would have been considered "misinformation", "propaganda" or "harmful content". These are considered "the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain" (Wikipedia)

   So many of the great discoveries in science were controversial in their time. "On the Origin of Species", expanding universe, microbiology. Do you really want the government deciding what is acceptable? No, we don't. We fought a revolution to have the ability to think for ourselves.

   I'm not that worried though. Even if platforms are subjectively regulated by companies or the government, life seems to find a way. There are plenty of other mechanisms to publish scientific breakthroughs.

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3. smacktowardDec 2012
   Only share actionable anxieties.

   Just because an anxiety is not actionable by you does not mean that it is not actionable by someone else. And one way you, who lack the means to solve the problem, can motivate people who can to do so is by raising the profile of the problem. Writing about it is a way to do that.

   When Thomas Paine wrote of "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" in The American Crisis, he didn't have any direct way to stop soldiers from deserting from George Washington's army because the weather was cold and the fighting was rough. All he could do was highlight the problem of desertion and point out the consequences of their actions. Does that mean he shouldn't have written it?

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4. NewgyJan 2012
   Everything we need is already in the Constitution, in the First and Fourth Amendments of the Bill of Rights. We just have to defend our freedoms...through protest and through votes.

   "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." --Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4,1777

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