Reflection #9

The Crisis, No 1, written by Thomas Paine, shows off several instances where Paine uses rationalist style writing styles. As seen by me. One point where I noticed this was when he referred to Joan of Arc and that whole jambalaya of sorts having to do with their escapades with the French.

Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat bottomed boats; And in the fourteenth century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like man petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and healed by a woman, Joan of Arc.

Basically what he is saying is that if this one woman could help to not just repel the English, but to petrify them, then should we have any reason to fear them. Its rational as he is using history to inspire his people to fight off the British by simply saying that someone else did it, so why can't we. The use of rationalism as a tool for inspiration is a very powerful tool, as if you can rationalize going to war, then you are very good at your job. If I had to guess I would say that he wrote this thing to use as a tool to gain support for the war. Not just to gain soldiers to fight in said war, but to gain a fiscal advantage. Previously in class it was determined that he wrote this to appeal to the rich white folk. And I ask you why would you appeal to rich people to use as soldiers, when there are so few of them that it wouldn't raise their numbers significantly? Well it's because they have spare money, and someone with a lot of spare money could send that money towards the war effort, and a lot of people doing that could significantly help your cause. Think about it. What do you need to go to war? For one people. And how are you going to maintain hundreds upon thousands of people who all need to eat, well with a boat load of money. You would also require weapons, and similar material, like bigger weapons, and ships, and explosions. And these things are expensive so the only way to support the war is to be properly funded, and the only way to be properly funded is to have a sleuth of people all giving you their money. See where I'm going with this, yep the transitive property of math. If A equals B and B equals C, Then A equals C. I assume that you are smart enough to fill in the variables. But if your not the gist is that to support a war you need to use rationalism to influence as many rich people to all shout something along the lines of shut up and take my money. And that is why I think that this author has taken the time to create this paper to write literature that has displeased the chemistry gods because they think all paper should be used to do chemistry, but that is a story for another time.

Paine, Thomas. "The Crisis, No 1." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 134-136. Print.