To the Editor:
I have been reading my father’s copy of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” where he highlighted with yellow marker his many favorite passages. Dad retired in the ’70s. He was a hard-working, open-minded high school teacher here in Snohomish. He was also on the library board with the wonderful librarian Geraldine Earls. I can say, without any doubt, that he and Mrs. Earls would be appalled at the rampant and mindless banning of books that is happening now.
It is a legitimate concern that Donald Trump, who says he “runs the world” and approved a picture of himself with a crown above the caption “Long Live the King,” could have Thomas Paine’s 1776 writings banned because “Common Sense” skewers the “absurdity and evil” of monarchy as it “opens a door to the foolish, the wicked and the improper.”
Trump would think Paine’s words were directly attacking him.
Paine’s words apply to the present day dictators, oligarchs, power-hungry billionaires, disgraced scions of once admired family dynasties and anti-democracy presidents when he writes that “men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”
Candace Jarrett
Snohomish
