The CABG Rebellion: Episode 15 - Smash goes the fourth wall

If you don't recognize the reference there, I'll be surprised.

The first part with the pen and paper sort of creeped me out a bit, CG.

For a Brit, you sure know a helluva lot more American History than most Americans. I applaud your awesomeness.

Well, I made a small study of the War of Independence, including Tom Paine's The Crisis, and the 18th century is quite interesting for a student of history. There's the Enlightenment, Romanticism, The American Revolution, the French Revolution (the two have great affinity) and countless other events.

And thank you for the compliments!

Yes and we conveniently forget the crimes we committed to reach were we are now. Well I have to say the paper scenes are excellent as well as the well as the close up shots on the figures. Brilliant job once again Chaotic Good.

Chaotic Good wrote:Well, I made a small study of the War of Independence, including Tom Paine's The Crisis, and the 18th century is quite interesting for a student of history. There's the Enlightenment, Romanticism, The American Revolution, the French Revolution (the two have great affinity) and countless other events.

And thank you for the compliments!

CG, I could be wrong. But Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet: Common Sense. I know nothing of The Crisis.

Thomas Paine wrote The Crisis as a document to stir up colonial morale when the going was tough and many of the "Sunshine Soldiers" and "Good-weather Patriots" were leaving the fight.

I love it CG. It's a change, more CABG, more drama.

Great that we've returned to CABG, which was my complaint last time. I liked the episode, though it certainly wasn't the best. I want to know about more than just these members. I want a more wide=spread story, to be honest. It's not just that I'm not in it, there are tons more characters you can nad should do something with.

But Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet: Common Sense. I know nothing of The Crisis.

As Ham said, The Crisis was written in the heat of the war. Common Sense was written to persuade people to start it.

The opening line to the Crisis begins:

"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."

Just because he wrote one popular document doesn't mean he couldn't have written another, slightly less popular one.

Two popular documents. He also wrote Rights of Man in 1791, a document which argued in defence of the French Revolution which had taken place in 1789. He attacked a pamphlet by a Mr. Edmund Burke which condemned the French Revolution and argued that the people of England posessed no right to change their constitution or their laws due to the following passage in the 1688 Bill of Rights:

"That the lords spirutal and commons do humbly submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, to them [meaning William and Mary of Orange], their heirs and posterities, for ever."

Burke argued that this meant that the English people had renounced their right to change old laws, governments etc. Paine responded in the following manner:

"There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it[....]I am not contending for nor against any form of government, nor for nor against any party, here or elsewhere. That which a whole nation chooses to do it has a right to do. Mr. Burke says, No. Where, then, does the right exist? I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the manuscript assumed authority of the dead, and Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living."

So there we are. He also wrote The Age of Reason, a scathing attack on the Bible and on organized religion in general. (He was a deist).

So, that's it.

we conveniently forget the crimes we committed to reach were we are now.

What crimes? The American Revolution?

I think so, yes. Along with 'The word of God is the creation we behold'.

Haha! These are really funny CG. Loved this one as well.