City Determines How To Use Common Sense

Some Say No Harm Using Common Sense Daily. Others Attest A Little Common Sense Can Go A Long Way

A pocket-size copy kept at hand to smack a lil’ Common Sense upside the head.

CITY HALL— Having recently re-discovered their copy of Common Sense, the City has convened a series of Common Sense discussions to determine whether to use Common Sense, or continue under the current model of not using Common Sense in the course of day-to-day municipal governance.

The copy of Thomas Paine’s seminal 1776 treatise on independence from government overreach and undue obstruction in the dealings of its citizens was recently discovered in a box that had been moved from the old library into the new library.

Some fear that not using Common Sense would result in the City forgetting the Common Sense lesson that the role of government is to support the citizens who are taxed to fund it.

Others wonder if the simplest explanation is that the City simply forgot to use Common Sense, mistakenly believing it to be no longer relevant in modern municipal government.

“Is there even room for Common Sense anymore?”

Questions have arisen as to whether it would be appropriate for the City to employ Common Sense in the everyday dealings of the municipal government, with some believing there’s little room for Common Sense in local government these days.

“We’ve managed to make a lot of important decisions without using Common Sense, and I just don’t see any reason to start using Common Sense now,” said one City official.

In an effort to bridge the gap, the Council voted 7-2 to form a “Task Force on the Appropriate Use of Common Sense,” which will report back in 18-24 months with an assessment of whether Common Sense should be used.

The City Council, for their part, affirmed that they “fully support the idea of using Common Sense,” but clarified they have no actual control over whether the City Manager and his Administration use it.

One Common Sense solution proposed by the City’s archivist was to “display it under glass to make sure no one attempts to use Common Sense on a daily basis, which could result in more questions than answers.”

It’s not clear if the same Common Sense goals and ideals of government hold true today, almost 250 years after Paine’s argument against a government that only pretends to offer reasonable checks and balances against governmental overreach.

Constitutional scholars have gently reminded the Council that a government that works against its citizens is the exact thing Paine was warning about. “Governments that lose sight of Common Sense tend to start mistaking authority for purpose,” one expert noted. “And before you know it, people are being fined for re-paving a parking lot without permission.”

Whereas defenders of municipal authority may believe their purpose is to impart the strictest possible interpretation of status quo-maintaining laws upon the taxpaying citizenry, Common Sense suggests that the government is but a necessary evil whose foremost role is to serve the greater good of its populace, not to become an intolerable burden upon its own citizens.

Common Sense would suggest that a man who proactively sought and received his neighbors’ input & support, pays his taxes, and abides by the rules, should be allowed to build what he’s experienced and capable of doing upon his own property without having to face repetitive and oft-refuted government obstruction.

Some even suggest that Common Sense calls for the government to assist in achieving the greater good that its citizens have voted in support of, not work against it.

Common Sense states that government inflicting any unnecessary burden upon its citizenry is a great irony, as “when we...are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”